HOME MISSION 
TRAILS 



J. S. STOW&LL 




Class ^l^BJZX^ 

Book. M 75 7, - 

Copyright N? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOStT. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



MAKING MISSIONS REAL 



Home Mission Trails 



BY 

JAY S. STOWELL 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1920, by 
JAY S. STOWELL 



©G1.A604293 



LC Control Number 




^P96 027684 

/ 



- w t 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

Foreword 7 

I. Along the Trail 9 

II. Called to an Important Work 14 

HE. A Christian Training for Mexican Boys 24 

IV. The Romance of a Big Task 31 

V. A Modern Ministry in an Old Town . . 39 
VI. From Scoffer to Christian Minister. . 47 

VII. A Land of Contrasts 54 

VIII. Abolishing "The Border" at Douglas, 

Arizona 62 

IX. Making the Desert Bloom 72 

X. A Modern Fairy Story 79 

XI. Reaching Real People in California . . 88 

XII. Stories from Gardena 102 

XHI. Getting Close to Real Life 115 

XIV. An International Gateway 122 

XV. A Work Worth While 130 

XVI. On an Indian Reservation 141 

XVLL A Modern Migration and Some Things 

Involved in It 150 

XVIII. Headquarters for Goodwill 157 

XIX. A Large Church and a Large Program 

in a Large City 167 

XX. An Industrial Development Makes a 

New Task for the Church 175 

XXI. Reaching New York's Little Italy. . . . 182 
XXII. A Church in a Graveyard 188 

XXIII. Known by Its Fruits 197 

XXIV. A Long and Useful Life 202 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING PAGE 

On the Trail i 9 

Mexican Methodist Episcopal Church and Sunday 
School, Albuquerque, New Mexico 29 

Schoolhouse standing only a few hundred feet from 
ruined Church. The only Protestant Church in an 
area of two thousand square miles 32 

Mexican Girl, Tucson, Arizona 49 

Rev. John Burman, Douglas, Arizona 63 

Mormon Chapel at Mesa, Arizona, where a Mormon 
temple is soon to be erected 76 

Mexican Boy, Gardena, California 108 

Just over the line in Lower California. A Methodist 
home missionary is just opening a Sunday school 
for them 126 

Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church, Oakland, 
California 135 

The public school in this community was started 
years ago in this church. There are now several 
school buildings representing large investments, 
but the inadequate church building remains un- 
altered 144 

Class in Wood-Working, Morgan Memorial Church, 
Boston 157 



FOREWORD 

Approximately one half of the missionary 
money given by Methodist Episcopal Sunday- 
school pupils is used for work in the United 
States. It is most important, both for the 
sake of the work and for the sake of those who 
are sharing so generously in it, that every 
contributor should understand as fully as 
possible the nature of the enterprises to which 
he is giving his money and his prayers. The 
purpose of this book is to help interpret the 
Centenary home mission program in concrete 
terms. 

Prepared under the direction of the Depart- 
ment of Missionary Education of the Board of 
Sunday Schools, these sketches are designed 
primarily to assist Sunday-school superintend- 
ents, missionary superintendents, and depart- 
ment superintendents in presenting the meaning 
of the Centenary to their pupils. It is hoped, 
however, that many ministers and laymen not 
directly connected with the Sunday school, will 
find the material of genuine interest for reading 
purposes and of value in their work, 

7 



8 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

The material of the book has for the most 
part been secured from personal visitation to 
the fields described, and every effort has been 
put forth to insure the accuracy of the state- 
ments made. No attempt has been made to 
make the book comprehend the entire scope of 
the Centenary home mission program. Instead 
it is frankly a book of snapshots rather than 
a panorama. The persons mentioned are not 
more heroic or more efficient than scores of 
others; they chance to be real individuals doing 
real tasks, and they are therefore interesting. 
The fields discussed are only typical of many 
similar fields with similar needs and oppor- 
tunities. 

Since the material of the book is designed 
for platform presentation, each sketch is ex- 
pected to be complete in itself. Related 
sketches have, however, so far as possible been 
grouped together. 

Jay S. Stowell. 
New York City, August 1, 1920. 







• 



On the Trail 



CHAPTER I 
ALONG THE TRAIL 

The trail of the home missionary in America 
is a very old one. It begins with the earliest 
American settlements and it follows down 
through the years a clear-cut, well-blazed, easily 
recognizable path. 

America owes a larger debt to her brave, 
persistent, and ever-present Christian mission- 
aries than she is likely soon to acknowledge. 
Wherever a settler has made his way into the 
uncut forest, there, sooner or later — and usually 
sooner — the home missionary has found him. 
In the Western-moving caravans the missionary 
has ridden, and when the new settlement has 
been established the Christian preacher has 
been there to proclaim Jesus Christ and the way 
of life which he came to teach. 

For examples of courage, fidelity, self-sacrifice, 
and unselfish service one has only to read the 
annals of our home missionary heroes. While 
others have sought fortunes in new lands, they 
have been content to be the servants of Him 



10 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

who had not where to lay his head. Often 
underpaid, they have remained faithful and 
uncomplaining. In the midst of selfishness and 
greed they have taught brotherhood, cooper- 
ation, and service; in the face of recklessness 
and lawlessness they have stood for law and 
order and the established forms of justice. 
They have built churches, established schools, 
and provided Sunday schools, without which 
millions of our young people would have grown 
into manhood and womanhood uncared for by 
the church and ignorant of Jesus Christ. 

In the first blush of our country's westward 
expansion the task of the home missionary 
seemed to be and was primarily that of church 
extension. He planted churches where without 
him no churches would have been established. 
To be sure, those churches were often little 
more than shells which a passing wind might 
almost blow away, but they were symbols of 
something much more substantial and worth 
while. The multitude of such churches which 
the home missionary has built is beyond com- 
prehension, and his untiring persistence in the 
task has been little short of marvelous to the 
observer. None of the ordinary incentives of 
material gain or profit were his, but an incentive 



ALONG THE TRAIL 11 

far greater than that of worldly profit kept him 
faithful to his task. 

As the years have passed conditions and needs 
have steadily changed. It is no disparagement 
of the work of those who labored in the past to 
say that the plans, the equipment, and the 
methods which they used are no longer adequate 
to meet the needs of a new day. Forests have 
given way to cities and towns, railroads and 
factories have sprung up, deserts have been 
transformed into gardens, and a simple frontier 
organization of life has been replaced by complex 
social and economic machinery, which has vastly 
increased our demands upon life and our facil- 
ities for satisfying those demands. 

There is still genuine need for church exten- 
sion in America, but the crying need of the 
present hour is not that of extension to new 
fields, but, rather, the placing upon an efficient 
working basis of those churches which have been 
established in the past and which in altogether 
too many cases have been allowed for lack of 
support to languish in the face of large need. 

The cry of the church is still "Forward," but 
the great triumphs of the future must be among 
new social and racial groups in communities 
already occupied, and in a larger and broader 



12 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

ministry to the lives of those who are already 
related to the church or living in its immediate 
vicinity. 

Cheap, barnlike, one-room churches must 
give way to substantial buildings with many 
rooms and adapted to the needs of religious 
education and to community service of many 
sorts. A staff of trained workers adequate to 
meet the religous needs of the community must 
take the place of one often untrained man upon 
whose shoulders responsibilities too great for 
him to bear have been loaded, A program of 
many parts, including generous provision for 
religious education and social activities of various 
sorts, must be made to supplement the present 
limited ministry of the church. 

We must learn to minister not alone to those 
who, temporarily separated from the church, 
welcome its appearance, but also to millions 
who living under the very shadow of the church 
find in it nothing to attract them. We must 
study to win for Jesus Christ the multitudes 
who, born on foreign shores, but now living 
as our neighbors, do not understand our ideals 
or ways of life, or the religion which we profess. 
We must discover how to get hold of the young 
life of our nation not now in any church or 



ALONG THE TRAIL 13 

Sunday school and give it an adequate Christian 
training. 

It is something of this sort which home 
missions means to-day and is to mean in the 
days ahead. We are a little further down the 
trail, that is all; and as we proceed broader 
vistas open before us and we see more clearly 
the rich significance of the religion we profess, 
and with it all there dawns upon us something 
of the immense proportions of the inspiring task 
which we undertook when we set out with our 
Master to help make and keep America Chris- 
tian. 



CHAPTER II 
CALLED TO AN IMPORTANT WORK 

In the year 1855, Dr. J. P. Durbin, secretary 
of the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, said in his annual report that 
the Society was desperately in need of a man 
for New Mexico, "who," as he phrased it, 
"will give his life to this work and make the 
New Mexico Mission the great and only enter- 
prise of his life, keeping clear of all worldly 
schemes, and becoming the apostle of the 
Spanish population of that territory. It is a 
work worthy of a great and devoted soul. Such 
a man to superintend, to preach, to establish 
churches and schools would leave his life an 
illuminated mark on the page of the history of 
the church and of the present territory and 
future State of New Mexico." 

The Methodist Episcopal Church had begun 
its missionary work in New Mexico in 1850, 
almost as soon as New Mexico became a part of 
the United States, but it had seemed difficult to 
secure anyone who would really give himself 

14 



CALLED TO IMPORTANT WORK 15 

unreservedly to the work in this very difficult 
and even dangerous frontier field. 

At the time that Dr. Durbin was making his 
report to the Missionary Society the Rev. 
Thomas Harwood was just about preaching his 
first sermon in Wisconsin. His soul was full of 
missionary zeal, but he had never thought of 
New Mexico as his future field of labor, and 
had never so much as heard of Dr. Durbin. 
Whether or not Dr. Harwood was the man 
raised up in response to this appeal and need of 
the Missionary Society you perhaps may best 
judge after studying his life and some of the 
things which he accomplished. In one respect 
at least Dr. Harwood fully met the qualifica- 
tions laid down by Dr. Durbin, for he literally 
gave the best of his life to New Mexico; and we 
know also that in spite of temptations to the 
contrary he did keep himself free from "all 
worldly schemes." It was some years later 
when Dr. Harwood actually reached New 
Mexico, but in the meantime, without any 
planning on his part, he was receiving a training 
which fitted him admirably for the arduous 
tasks of the New Mexico field. 

During his early years he had struggled with 
all of the difficulties of a rough frontier farm; 



16 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

later he struggled to secure an education; for 
five years he taught in the East, and then as 
many more in the West. Interspersed with 
his teaching were extended periods devoted to 
land surveying on the frontier, often where the 
Chippewa and the Sioux Indians were numerous. 
For a number of years Dr. Harwood served as a 
local preacher and as a regular pastor. For 
eighteen months during the Civil War he was a 
soldier in the 25th Wisconsin Volunteers, and 
for eighteen months following was chaplain of 
the same regiment. After his discharge from 
the army he spent three years more in the active 
work of the ministry. He was, therefore, forty 
years of age before, responding to a pressing 
invitation, he and his talented wife found their 
way into the territory of New Mexico, at that 
time a field unreached by railroads or other 
modern conveniences. Like Moses, he had 
had his forty years of preparation, a large part 
of it in the wilderness. 

He did not then know that the rest of his life 
was to be devoted to New Mexico, but, staying 
steadily by the task first as missionary and then 
as superintendent, he built himself into the life 
and history of New Mexico until the two are 
inseparably linked. For more than forty years 



CALLED TO IMPORTANT WORK 17 

he made his interests and those of the people of 
New Mexico one. He had the fine faculty of 
making friends, even of people who differed 
from him in their ideas, and possibly no one has 
been more intimately known throughout New 
Mexico and more generally loved than has Dr. 
Harwood. It has been said of him, as of 
another great man, "If you ask for his monu- 
ment, stand anywhere [in New Mexico] and 
look about you." 

During his years of service in New Mexico 
he dedicated sixty-six churches, chapels, and 
schools, and saw thousands of Spanish-Ameri- 
cans won to Christianity. He had such a rare 
combination of talents that some one said, "He 
finds it not difficult to return from praying with 
a sick Mexican child and pick up his pen and 
write a forcible argument in defense of state- 
hood." Positions were offered him under the 
United States government, but he refused them 
all and stayed faithfully at his chosen task. 

When Dr. Harwood reached New Mexico 
not a public school building could be found. 
There was hardly a Bible in one family in a 
thousand and only a few other books were in 
the Territory. Public roads and bridges were 
unknown, except such few as had been built 



18 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

by the government or by Protestant pioneers, 
and there was hardly an American plow, wagon, 
or buggy in the entire region. Seventy-three 
and one half per cent of the people over ten 
years of age were unable to read, and seventy- 
eight and one half per cent were unable to write. 

Dr. Harwood's field was not altogether well 
defined when he first undertook the work in 
New Mexico. He asked of Father Dyer, the 
presiding elder, where he was to work and what 
he was to do. 

"The first thing for you to do is to secure a 
horse, for your circuit will be large," was the 
reply. 

A man standing near by and hearing the 
remark said, "I have plenty of ponies and will 
loan Brother Harwood one; he can have his 
pick of a dozen or more, and he may use the 
pony as long as he wants to." The pony was 
brought out. 

"Now, if you had a bridle and saddle you 
would be ready for your work, wouldn't you?" 
said the presiding elder. At this one man 
volunteered to furnish the saddle and another 
man the bridle, and so, almost quicker than it 
takes to tell the story, the new missionary was 
fitted out for his field. 



CALLED TO IMPORTANT WORK 19 

"Now get your pony shod," was the instruc- 
tion, "then start northward by the way of 
Fort Union, Ocate, Elizabethtown, Cimmaron, 
Vermejo, and Red River until you meet a 
Methodist preacher coming this way. Then 
come back on some other road and rest up a 
little; thence go south until you meet another 
Methodist preacher coming this way; thence 
home again and rest a little; thence westward 
and eastward until you meet other Methodist 
preachers coming this way. All this will be 
your work." 

It did not take the new missionary long to 
discover that he had a large field. Taking the 
pony to a blacksmith shop he met a very talk- 
ative blacksmith, who admitted that he was 
the son of a Methodist class leader, although he 
had come out to the wild country of New 
Mexico and had become what he called a 
"tough case." He had been drinking freely, 
but when Mr. Harwood offered to pay for shoe- 
ing the pony he said,"0 no ! I know I am a hard 
case, but not hard enough to charge a Metho- 
dist preacher anything for shoeing his horse." 

The first Sunday school ever organized in 
New Mexico so far as the records reveal was 
organized by Dr. Harwood, and the place of 



20 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

meeting was an adobe, dirt-floor, flat-roof hen 
house. Here, with Mrs. Harwood's help, a 
day school also was opened which soon had 
about thirty pupils. The Sunday school had 
about the same number of members, made up 
of Americans and Mexicans. 

There were many discouragements in these 
early days. On one trip Dr. Harwood fell in 
with a man who was an inveterate talker. He 
found fault with the churches and with the 
government for having so long neglected New 
Mexico. He said that the government had 
never given them a school, nor aided them in any 
way; neither had the churches. 

"Now," said he, "the Methodist Church has 
sent you here as a missionary who cannot speak 
a word of Spanish; and even if you could, it 
would do the Mexican people no good, for they 
are Roman Catholics and you can never make 
anything more of them. You might as well go 
down and preach to those telegraph poles." 
Even this fault-finder Dr. Harwood's person- 
ality won, however, and he had in him always an 
admirer and a strong friend. 

Some of the trips which Dr. Harwood took 
in those early days with his pony were long and 
tedious, involving weeks and even months of 



CALLED TO IMPORTANT WORK 21 

travel and covering many hundreds of miles. 
The fact that he did not know Spanish was a 
genuine handicap, as he could not even inquire 
the way while on the road. On one occasion 
he was obliged to turn back and spend the night 
at the place from which he had started in the 
morning simply because he could not understand 
the people and they could not understand him. 
He then resolved to master some Spanish at 
least, and after supper by a blazing fireplace he 
received his first lesson. His host could talk 
Spanish, but he could not write it; he had 
learned it from the people. The thing which 
Dr. Harwood wanted most of all to say in 
Spanish was, "Is this the road to Elizabeth- 
town?" And so the lesson proceeded some- 
what as follows : 

Dr. Harwood said "is," and his host said 
"es." This Dr. Harwood wrote down. Dr. 
Harwood then said "this," and his host said 
"este." Dr. Harwood said "road," and his 
teacher said "camino." Dr. Harwood said 
"to," and the host said "a." Dr. Harwood 
said "Elizabethtown," and the response was 
the same. Then Dr. Harwood read the result 
of his first lesson, "Es este el camino a Eliza- 
bethtown?" 



22 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

The next morning Dr. Harwood started out 
quite elated over the fact that he could speak 
Spanish, and he proceeded to ask every person 
that he met, "Es este el camino a Elizabeth- 
town ?" He had not gone very far, however, 
before he overtook a man on foot, and with all 
the ardor of a boy trying a new toy he paused 
and said, "Es este el camino a Elizabethtown?" 

The man turned, looked full at Dr. Harwood 
and replied, "Lawd, man, you'll have to talk 
English to me. I doesn't understand de language 
of dis country." He was a colored soldier. 

Thus traveling, talking, preaching, and work- 
ing, Dr. Harwood gradually became the friend 
of the people of New Mexico. He slept in their 
homes and they came to know him and he to 
know and to understand them. The fine chain 
of Mexican churches and missions, Albuquerque 
College at Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the 
Harwood School for girls in the same city are a 
few of the monuments to the self-sacrificing 
efforts of this courageous man and his efficient 
and unselfish wife. 

The Centenary is going to make possible new 
church buildings, a better trained leadership, 
better college buildings, and other advances in 
method and equipment in the Spanish-American 



CALLED TO IMPORTANT WORK 23 

work in New Mexico; but we cannot under- 
stand all that is involved in it unless we under- 
stand something of the labors and achievements 
of Dr. Harwood, the man who all unconsciously 
came to answer the appeal made by Dr. Durbin 
in his annual report to the Missionary Society 
in the year 1855. 



CHAPTER m 

A CHRISTIAN TRAINING FOR MEXICAN 
BOYS 

A visitor to the grounds of Albuquerque 
College in tlie spring of 1914 would not have 
discovered very much resemblance between 
this institution and the picture which is ordi- 
narily created in the mind by the suggestion 
of a college campus. The yard was grown up 
to weeds, the window lights were smashed, and 
the entire institution had the appearance of 
dilapidation. Inside, the rooms were dirty, 
the plaster was crumbling from the walls, and 
a more undesirable place for a school to be held 
could not easily be conceived. 

It seems like a tragedy that this fine school, 
organized in 1889 by Dr. Thomas Harwood, so 
long superintendent of the New Mexico Mission, 
should have been allowed to fall into such a 
state of disrepair that it could no longer be 
used. For some reason, for which no particular 
individual was responsible, this institution, 
which did such excellent work for some years, 
did not receive satisfactory support, and because 

24 



A CHRISTIAN TRAINING 25 

it did not receive support it soon lacked pupils, 
and then because it lacked pupils it was doubly 
difficult to get support. The school was closed 
and for two years was unused. 

It was not to be expected, however, that an 
institution so much needed would be allowed 
permanently to languish. Bishop Francis J. 
McConnell at last discovered Dr. H. A. Bassett, 
who had for sixteen years been a missionary in 
Mexico, and to him he offered the hard task of 
making a real school out of this institution 
which, at the moment, was nothing but a group 
of unsatisfactory, dilapidated buildings. Dr. 
Bassett came to the field and with true modesty 
but genuine vigor set about accomplishing the 
impossible. Money had to be raised to rehabil- 
itate the buildings; the weeds had to be elimi- 
nated from the yards, and an immense amount 
of hard work had to be done before any school 
work could be thought of. 

At last the buildings were semipresentable, 
and Dr. Bassett announced that on the eighth 
day of September school would open. The 
only reason that the school did not open on 
that date was the fact that there were no 
pupils. The date of opening was changed to 
the 17th, and again it was changed. At last, 



26 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

the first day of October, the school actually 
did open with three pupils, and before the end 
of the year thirteen had been enrolled. The 
second year there were twenty-seven; the third 
year thirty-nine; the fourth year came our 
participation in the World War, and thirty-five 
pupils were enrolled. The next year the enroll- 
ment was the same, but the following year 
(1919) the number reached sixty-two and a 
considerable number of pupils had to be turned 
away because the buildings were inadequate 
to meet their needs. 

The teachers in this school have demonstrated 
a heroism which has been typical of all fine 
Christian workers throughout the ages. They 
have stood by their tasks even when more 
alluring financial offers came their way, and 
now they are to be rewarded by having more 
adequate facilities supplied to them. This is 
one of the Centenary projects, and to anyone 
who is familiar with the needs of the Southwest 
it is apparent that the sort of work done here 
is one of the most needed. In no other way 
at present can the leadership necessary for 
maintaining the various Spanish-speaking 
churches and missions of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church be secured. 



A CHRISTIAN TRAINING 27 

Of course many of the boys who come to this 
school do not enter the Christian ministry. 
Many of them go out into business and other 
pursuits. Here they have a steady and persist- 
ent influence upon the large Spanish-speaking 
population which is to be found throughout 
the Southwest. One graduate of this school, 
who came here and took two years of theological 
training, is now working among his own people 
in Mexico and has been there since 1917. 
Three or four of the boys served in the army; 
some are teaching; some work in stores, and 
others are engaged in other occupations. At 
the Columbus celebration a quartet from this 
school skilled in playing the guitar formed one 
of the interesting features of the Spanish- 
American exhibit. Professor F. G. Heslet, 
the musical instructor, accompanied these boys. 

It ought to be said that Albuquerque College 
is in reality not a college at all, but, rather, a 
school with few entrance requirements where 
Mexican boys of reasonably good character, 
who for one reason or another are not having 
a fair chance at an education, may come and 
receive such education under Christian influ- 
ences. The school is popularly known as the 
"Harwood Boys' School." Some of the boys 



28 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

who come to this school are from Catholic 
homes; many of them can speak little or no 
English. Their parents are anxious for them 
to have a chance to learn English, and they are 
willing for their children to be educated in a 
Protestant school. Sometimes, however, the 
priest strongly objects to their coming, espe- 
cially if he discovers that the boys are becoming 
interested in the Protestant religion. 

It is something like this which has happened 
in the case of one of the most promising boys; 
but we will let his letter to Dr. H. A. Bassett, 
president of Albuquerque College, tell its own 
story. It reveals something of the hold which 
this school has on its pupils. This boy does 
not know why his father will not permit him 
to return to the school he loves. No one who 
reads the letter, however, can doubt for a 
moment that the schooling of this Mexican boy 
has been worth while, even though it has been 
interrupted by forces which he does not under- 
stand. 

Sept. 14, 1919. 
My dbajr Mr. Bassett: 

I thought I would write a few lines to let you know 
that I am well and at the same time to tell you that I 
received your most welcome letter a long time. I am 
awfully sorry that I didn't had enough time to answer it. 



A CHRISTIAN TRAINING 29 

I tried as hard as I could to come to school but my 
father didn't give me permission to come. I didn't know 
why. I hate to leave the school and at the same time I 
hate to leave you because I know you have been trying 
hard in making a real man out of me. But at any rate I 
am going to try and be a Christian man all my life and I 
know I owe all this to you. I hope my father will change 
his mind. 

I am too busy now, Mr. Bassett. I sure am working 
hard. I wish myself back in the "dear Albuquerque 
College." I am here in the mountains and am just 
thinking of my dear school. 

Please excuse writing with pencil, I am too far from 
home. So with my best regards to Mrs. Bassett, I remain, 
As ever yours, 

(Signed.) 

This is but a suggestion of the fine Christian 
influence which Dr. Bassett and his associates 
throw around the boys while they are receiving 
their education. We may well rejoice that the 
Centenary is to mark a new day of opportunity 
for this much-needed institution with its high 
record of service. 

The Centenary, however, is to do another 
fine thing for the Mexican work in Albuquerque 
— the small, inadequate, and over-crowded 
Mexican churches there are to give place to a 
large and attractive building to be erected 
almost in the center of the town, just across 



SO HOME MISSION TRAILS 

from the post office. The lots have already 
been purchased and the work of building will 
move forward in the near future. Since the 
population of Albuquerque, the largest place 
in New Mexico, is one half Mexican, it is easy 
to imagine how wide an influence this enlarged 
and better-equipped work will exercise. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE ROMANCE OF A BIG TASK 

One hundred and fifty years ago the owner of 
a loom house in England was accustomed to 
turn over the building to his friend John Wes- 
ley for the purpose of holding religious services. 
To-day in the mountains of northern New 
Mexico the grandson of that loom house owner 
lives. Every second Tuesday evening he is 
present at the service conducted by the Method- 
ist missionary in the little schoolhouse at Red 
River. Little wonder that this man is faithful 
to the services, for until recently the community 
was entirely without religious ministry. 

The missionary, in order to preach in this 
schoolhouse, is obliged to drive a Ford auto- 
mobile forty-five miles from Cimarron over 
mountain roads at some points two miles above 
sea level, or, when the roads are rough, to ride 
a saddle horse and lead a pack horse behind, so 
that he can carry books, magazines, and other 
materials into the homes, where without this 
ministry no good literature would be available. 

si 



32 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

In the heart of winter, when the roads are worse 
than usual and the weather is most disagreeable, 
it is next to impossible to travel over these 
mountain paths even on horseback, and so 
during that period of the year the Red River 
services are of necessity discontinued. 

The romance of home missions is well exem- 
plified by the work of this missionary, the Rev. 
Gilbert Traveller. In brief, his field may be 
summed up as follows: More than two thousand 
square miles of territory, four agricultural 
communities, three mining camps, one lumber 
camp, one important mixed community, and 
uncounted ranchers, settlers, cowboys, mining 
prospectors, and others, hidden away in some 
of the most beautiful mountains, canyons, and 
fertile valleys which the mind can picture. 
And this Methodist missionary is the only 
religious worker in all that large and important 
territory. 

It is indeed a man's job to minister in this 
unusual field, for, added to the physical endur- 
ance necessary to cover the field, a most unusual 
mental agility and adaptability is the sine qua 
non of success here. The field indeed is one of 
contrasts. The mountains are filled with gold, 
but notwithstanding the fact that the entire 




Schoolhouse standing only a few hundred feet from ruined 
Church 




The only Protestant Church in an area of two thousand 
square miles 



ROMANCE OF A BIG TASK 33 

region is predominantly Protestant the only 
Protestant church in the territory has for years 
been little better than a barn, and last winter 
(1919) it tumbled into a heap of ruins after a 
moderate snowfall. Here are graduates of 
Yale and other Eastern colleges, and also boys 
and girls from Protestant homes who have 
never been in a Sunday school or heard a 
Christian sermon. Here are individuals who 
have traveled four times around the world, and 
others who know little beyond their immediate 
environment. 

On this same field are homes costing as much 
as fifty or sixty thousand dollars and filled with 
the finest that art and literature and the skill 
of man can provide; here also as well are log 
shacks and huts of the humblest sort. Here are 
mountain passes two miles above sea level which 
can be crossed only with the greatest difficulty, 
and fertile valleys where oats, and barley, and 
rye grow luxuriantly without even the trouble 
of irrigation. Further down a million-dollar 
irrigation project is now nearly completed. 
The dam and immense reservoir lie above 
Cimarron, and the land to be watered lies below 
just adjacent to the town. With the opening 
of this project new settlers will arrive in sub- 



34 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

•tantial numbers and the field for service will 
be again enlarged. 

It would be useless to attempt to create with 
words an adequate picture of this field. It 
must be seen if its beauty, its variety, and its 
opportunity are to be appreciated. The im- 
portant thing to remember, however, is that 
amid all of this beauty and variety the only 
individual who is concerned about ministering 
to the religious life of the population is a single 
Methodist missionary. This man must call 
in the homes, listen sympathetically to the 
needs and difficulties of the inhabitants, min- 
ister in times of distress, organize Sunday 
schools, preach, and conduct all of the other 
activities usually supposed to form a part of 
an adequate Christian ministry to a community. 

In order to do this important piece of work 
he must maintain an automobile which is almost 
continually in use over roads that test the 
strength and endurance of any machine. In 
addition he must keep a saddle horse and a 
pack horse for the times when the roads are 
impassable for a motor car. How else, indeed, 
could good reading matter be carried into a 
gold-mining camp perched on the almost perpen- 
dicular side of a high mountain, or how else 



ROMANCE OF A BIG TASK 35 

could the missionary sleep at one point on 
his charge and the next evening preach in a log 
schoolhouse forty-five miles away? And yet, 
unless he does exactly that thing some boys 
and girls from Protestant homes are going to 
grow up without any Christian ministry what- 
soever. 

This is a task which no ordinary home 
missionary can well handle. Mr. Traveller is 
able not only to visit in the homes and preach 
satisfactory sermons from the pulpit, but he 
can handle as wild a horse as any cow-puncher 
on his field, and he can play his part in the 
round-up to the satisfaction of the most fas- 
tidious cowboy. His skill with horses and 
cattle is only equaled by his skill in piloting a 
Ford automobile over roads that to an ordinary 
driver would seem impassable. He is not in 
the habit of stopping short of his goal when 
once he sets out to attain it. 

There are numerous needy frontier fields 
under the care of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, but there are few where the task is 
more exacting, or where the opportunity is 
more alluring than here at Cimarron, in the 
mountains of northern New Mexico. Cimarron 
was one of the first places reached by a Meth- 



36 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

odist missionary when the Methodist Episcopal 
Church undertook its missionary work in New 
Mexico two generations ago. For years, how- 
ever, the work has been carried on in an old 
dilapidated frame building, which was abso- 
lutely inadequate to meet the need. Last 
winter, as already stated, it collapsed. A few 
hundred feet away from the ruins stands a 
beautiful brick schoolhouse, but in Cimarron, 
and in the large territory embracing the two 
thousand square miles described above, there 
is not a Protestant church building of any sort. 
The Centenary proposes the erection of a real 
church to be located at Cimarron and to be 
equipped to minister to the entire community. 
It will serve as a religious center for the exten- 
sive territory lying round about. The church 
is to have social rooms, a gymnasium, a reading 
room, a rest room, club rooms, and a banquet 
room for cow-punchers 5 banquets and for 
men's clubs. It will be a church with rooms 
for Sunday school classes, for Boy Scouts, for 
Girl Scouts, and any other needed organiza- 
tions for young people. Such a church will 
command the respect of the people because 
it will be dignified, substantial, and adapted 
to meet the needs of the community. It can 



ROMANCE OF A BIG TASK 37 

demand and secure the support of those who 
in the past have felt that the program of the 
church has been too small and too inadequate 
to be worthy of support. The time is ripe for 
a genuine forward move here, and the Confer- 
ence of New Mexico has recognized this fact 
by making Cimarron one of its first Centenary 
projects. 

The plans for this field, as worked out by Mr. 
Traveller, include a substantial ministry to the 
many families in the territory who are so situ- 
ated that they cannot get out to religious 
services. Already the pack horse and the Ford 
automobile go loaded with magazines and papers 
to be distributed, and books to be loaned until 
the next visit. This service is to be extended to 
include Home Department literature, a monthly 
sermon sent out by mail, and if possible, World 
Outlook, an "Advocate/' or some other appro- 
priate periodical. 

Some of the plans are moving forward; others 
must wait, for it takes money to buy a machine 
for duplicating sermons, to purchase Home 
Department literature, to pay postage, and to 
secure other necessary equipment. And money 
is not plentiful on the field just now. In the 
meantime a survey is projected which will 



38 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

reveal the facts, and which, incidentally, will 
show the birthdays of many who, tucked away 
in the mountains, receive little mail, but who 
will now find themselves pleasantly remembered 
with a letter from their pastor at least once a 
year. 

There is enough wealth in this territory to 
support the plans of the most ambitious leader, 
but the church has so long been content with 
an inadequate program that community support 
has not measured up to the needs. There are 
indications on every hand, however, that the 
support will be forthcoming when the church 
demonstrates that she really means business. 
Even a good Christian finds difficulty in 
waxing enthusiastic about a program which is 
limited by the four walls of a cramped, dis- 
carded store building, lighted by lamps bor- 
rowed from the parsonage. 

If the Centenary can minister to needs such 
as these, and can do it with such dispatch and 
vigor as to get the plans past the sticking point, 
it will indeed set in operation forces which are 
beyond calculation. The churches and Sunday 
schools of Methodism are determined that it 
shall be done. 



CHAPTER V 

A MODERN MINISTRY IN AN OLD 
TOWN 

If you chance to be going to the Pacific 
Coast over the old Santa Fe trail and desire to 
park your car in the ancient town of Santa Fe, 
in the very center of New Mexico, you will 
discover that the space set apart for parking 
purposes is directly across from the Methodist 
Episcopal church. If you are observant, you 
will also note a neat sign suggesting that a rest 
room has been provided in the basement of the 
church where you may make yourself at home. 
If you go across the street, you will find that a 
pleasant young lady is in charge of this room, 
and that she is there to serve you and to give 
you any information which may be needed or 
helpful. This fine plan of ministering to the 
large number of tourists who pass through Santa 
Fe is an idea of the Rev. S. W. Marble, pastor 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Santa 
Fe, and it is only one of several ways by which 
he is trying to make this church measure up 
to the needs of a very peculiar situation, 

39 



40 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Since Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico 
and is one of the oldest towns in the United 
States, you might expect to find here a large 
self-supporting Methodist Episcopal church, 
but such is not the case. The town is too 
dominantly Catholic for that. Of the present 
population of Santa Fe of some 7,000, it is said 
that 5,500 are Catholics, and a very large 
proportion of these are Mexican Catholics, or 
more correctly, Spanish-American Catholics, 
for while they are of Mexican stock most of 
them were born in the United States. Here 
is the great Catholic stronghold of the South- 
west, often called the "Catholic capital of the 
Southwest." Santa Fe is a Catholic shrine 
of considerable importance. Here one may 
see the old San Miguel Church, said to be the 
oldest church in the United States. Just 
across is an adobe house, claimed to be the 
oldest residence in the United States, and in 
the church is the famous old bell, understood 
to be the oldest church bell used in the United 
States. The relics of the past, together with 
the large and important Catholic institutions 
and organizations which center around Santa 
Fe, make it a distinctly Catholic town. It is 
here that the famous De Vargas Day Parade 



A MODERN MINISTRY 41 

is held. There is a tradition that when De 
Vargas approached Santa Fe with a view to 
taking the town from the Indians who had 
held it for some time, he held a prayer meeting 
and vowed that, if he were permitted to take 
the city, the image of the Virgin would be 
carried through the streets each year. However 
true this legend may be, it is true that the 
parade is held regularly, and multitudes of 
nuns, brothers, and members of altar societies 
walk down the streets, while thousands gather 
at the sides to witness the parade. A doll, 
representing the Virgin, is carried on a small 
platform on the shoulders of four girls; just 
behind come the archbishop and other digni- 
taries. The natives believe that as an evidence 
of the favor gained by this parade they get 
rain. It is said that they leave the Virgin out 
for a week or more in a little chapel, or until 
it rains. If the rain is not forthcoming, they 
are supposed to subject the image to various 
sorts of ill treatment until the rain appears. 
This parade is little less than awe-inspiring 
when one realizes the ignorance and super- 
stition which it represents. The standard of 
Catholicism in Santa Fe is considerably below 
that in most other parts of the United States, 



42 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

and it is said that good Catholics often sever 
their connections with the Catholic Church 
when they come to live here and get a glimpse 
of the ignorance and superstition which pre- 
vails. 

Santa Fe itself is an old Mexican town, 
originally laid out by the Spaniards; the main 
business structures still center about the plaza, 
upon one side of which is the Governor's 
palace, an edifice where the various governors 
of the Territory, from the early Spanish times 
down to 1909, resided. Some time after the 
establishment of the settlement Santa Fe was 
captured by the Pueblo Indians and held by 
them for several years. It was later recaptured 
by the Spaniards. 

The first sermon preached by a Methodist 
missionary in New Mexico was preached in 
Santa Fe from the text, "And I, brethren, when 
I came to you, came not with excellency of 
speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the 
testimony of God. For I determined not to 
know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, 
and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2. 1, 2). When the 
Methodist Episcopal church at Santa Fe was 
built, General Lew Wallace, the author of 
Ben Hur, was governor of the Territory of New 



A MODERN MINISTRY 43 

Mexico, and as a resident of Santa Fe became 
a member of the church. He was also a 
member of the official board. Visitors to Santa 
Fe are to-day shown the room in which a part 
at least of the famous book was written and the 
chair in which the general is supposed to have 
sat when writing it. 

The high school in this town of seven thous- 
and is doing business on the basis of a town of 
fifteen hundred. In the parochial schools the 
Spanish language is spoken and English is not 
stressed. Naturally, since Santa Fe is the 
capital of New Mexico, the government of the 
State is closely tied up with Catholicism. Each 
session of the Legislature a bill is passed appro- 
priating thousands of dollars of State money to 
Catholic institutions, although similar Pro- 
testant institutions do not receive any appro- 
priation of this sort. The governor of New 
Mexico has urged that the Spanish language 
be placed upon the same basis as English in 
the public schools, and he recommends that 
the study of Spanish be made compulsory. 
Incidentally, the governor is a native of old 
Mexico. Curiously enough, also, the speeches 
in the State Legislature can be understood 
only through an interpreter. Much of the 



44 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

speaking is done in Spanish, and there are 
certain members of the Legislature who cannot 
read the English language, and numerous 
others who cannot understand it when it is 
spoken at the speed ordinarily used by a public 
speaker. 

Perhaps this will help us to understand why 
we are still putting home mission money into 
a town like Santa Fe. We are doing it with 
the conviction that the consistent holding up 
of high Protestant ideals has had and will 
continue to have a very definite effect upon the 
community. It is not easy to go out and reach 
the Spanish-American population of Santa Fe 
with Protestant teaching. A deep-seated preju- 
dice against anything Protestant has been too 
thoroughly instilled in their minds for that to be 
accomplished easily, but in various indirect 
ways the work can be made to minister to 
these ignorant people who so much need help 
to a better way of life. The pastor is opening 
up a playground in the rear of the church and 
already Spanish-American boys and girls in the 
community are finding their way to this spot. 
As they become more and more acquainted 
with the leaders of the church and as they 
discover that their motives are only those of 



A MODERN MINISTRY 45 

helpfulness, barriers of long standing may 
ultimately be broken down. 

In the meantime the church is ministering 
to its English-speaking constituency and bear- 
ing its silent testimony to the multitudes of 
Spanish- American neighbors who pass its doors. 
It was the first church in the Denver Area to 
raise its entire Centenary quota, which, inci- 
dentally, was larger than the amount of mis- 
sionary funds received by it. Several hundred 
dollars also were raised to equip and furnish the 
rest room for automobile tourists and to provide 
an attendant. 

Thus in the midst of what some have called 
a "foreign mission field at home/ 5 and some- 
what overshadowed by the splendor of the 
Catholic institutions about it, this modest 
church performs its ministry and proclaims a 
religion which stands for an enlightened mind, a 
pure heart, and honest, unselfish service to one's 
fellow men. Whether or not the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in this extremely important 
center is to be provided with more adequate 
equipment and enabled to move forward with 
a program of work better adapted to the very 
peculiar needs of this community, the continued 
success of the Centenary will largely determine. 



46 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Surely, if there is any place in the United 
States where the simple gospel needs to be pro- 
claimed, it is here in the ancient town of Santa 
Fe, the political capital of the State of New 
Mexico and the religious capital of the Spanish- 
speaking Catholics of the Southwest. 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM SCOFFER TO CHRISTIAN 
MINISTER 

Early missionaries among the Spanish- 
speaking population of our Southwest had many 
unusual experiences, including the suffering 
of actual persecution at the hands of the native 
population. Bibles were burned, missionaries 
attacked, and Christian workers in at least one 
or two cases killed. Instances of more petty 
persecutions were common. Sometimes this 
took the form of disturbing Protestant services. 

One striking case of this latter form of per- 
secution occurred at Dona Ana, six miles north 
of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The preacher 
was a man named Silvestre Garcia, one of the 
first Mexican ministers in New Mexico, and 
the leader of the disturbance was a Mr. Dio- 
nisio Costales. He used to assemble a group 
of his cronies in front of the building where the 
services were being held. Then, standing on a 
box, he would imitate the preacher, to the 
great amusement of his comrades, who, in turn, 
would make enough uproar to interfere seriously 

47 



48 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

with the conduct of the service to which other 
Mexicans were trying to listen. One of the 
favorite forms which this program of tormenting 
took was that of shouting "Hallelujah!" and 
"Amen!" in loud voices as the service progressed. 

You might expect this story to relate that 
this treatment broke up the services and that 
the preacher was driven out of town, but such 
is not the case. Possibly it would have been 
true had it not been that the father of Mr. 
Dionisio Costales went one night to hear the 
preacher of "new things." He liked it, and the 
following service he invited his sons to go, with 
the result that in a few weeks the whole family, 
ten in all, were converted and soon after 
joined the church. Disturbances kept on, but 
Mr. Costales now became defender of what he 
had scoffed at. To-day instead of breaking up 
Christian services he is the pastor of the 
Mexican church at Las Crucez, and he has a 
substantial congregation and a fine work. He 
has often testified, "I have been dealt with in 
the same manner that I dealt with Brother 
Silvestre Garcia, but I rejoice in it!" 

The story does not end there, however, for 
Mr. Costales sent his son to Albuquerque 
College, and after his graduation the son 




Mexican Girl, Tucson, Arizona 



CHRISTIAN MINISTER 49 

entered the ministry of the church. He is 
now an unusually well-trained Mexican pastor, 
and is in charge of the very important Mexican 
work at Tucson, Arizona. 

Tucson was an old Mexican town until the 
influx of American residents changed the char- 
acter of the community. The result is a modern 
town built right by the side of and now over- 
whelming the old Mexican element. The 
Mexican population is, however, still large and 
the Mexican work here most needed. Mr. 
Costales has a fine brick building with parsonage 
attached, and the Centenary is providing funds 
so that the building can be finished and made to 
meet every need of the work. This Mexican 
church raised its entire Centenary quota, and 
the boys and girls in the Sunday school had an 
important part in that achievement. They 
take up their Centenary offerings regularly, 
and the minimum offering is expected to be 
two cents. The pastor of this church edits 
for the Board of Sunday Schools the quarterly 
which is used among the Spanish-speaking 
churches of the Spanish District of the New 
Mexico Annual Conference. Some of the 
classes use the English lesson helps. The 
beautiful pulpit of this church was made by 



50 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

one of its members at the cost of about thirty- 
eight dollars. 

Here in Tucson also is located the Mary J. 
Piatt Girls' School, under the auspices of the 
Woman's Home Missionary Society. This 
boarding school is filled with a group of fine 
Mexican girls, a considerable number of whom 
come from homes across the border in Mexico, 
and from nominally Catholic homes. There 
is a need here in Tucson for a similar school for 
boys. At present there is no mission school 
for Mexican boys between the Southern Meth- 
odist School at El Paso, Texas, and the Meth- 
odist Episcopal School at Gardena, near Los 
Angeles, California, with the result that many 
Mexican boys who ought to receive the training 
which the mission schools provide are denied 
the privilege of such training. Only recently 
two mothers made a rather long trip across 
the border from Old Mexico to Tucson, bringing 
their sons and expecting to find there a Protes- 
tant school for boys. When they discovered 
that the school admitted only girls they were 
much disappointed, and since Los Angeles, or 
Albuquerque, or El Paso was too far away, 
they were obliged to take their sons home once 
more. One of these mothers was a Catholic, 



CHRISTIAN MINISTER 51 

but she was anxious to have her son placed under 
Protestant teaching and refused to send him to 
the Catholic school. 

Here was an opportunity thrown in the way 
of the Protestant Church, and yet there was no 
way by which it could be improved. Mr. 
Costales works in close cooperation with the 
girls' school, and this is an asset, both to the 
work of the church and to the work of the 
school. One of the results of a situation in 
which there is no adequate opportunity for 
Protestant boys to receive an education is that 
the graduates from the Mary J. Piatt School 
go out to marry Catholic boys. Mr. Costales 
is hoping to see this situation remedied by the 
establishment of a school for Mexican boys in 
Tucson. 

If you are in Tucson on a Sunday morning 
and attend the Mexican church, you will dis- 
cover a Sunday school, with approximately one 
hundred in attendance, meeting at nine forty- 
five. There are twelve officers and teachers 
in the school and the work is conducted along 
approved lines. They have two banners — 
one as an incentive for attendance and the 
other as an incentive for offerings. There is a 
training class for teachers and for prospective 



52 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

teachers every Saturday evening, with twelve 
enrolled. At eleven o'clock every Sunday a 
preaching service is held and at three o'clock 
the Epworth League meets. At seven-thirty 
there is a second preaching service, and during 
the week every night is taken with the single 
exception of Monday night: a cottage prayer 
meeting is held on Tuesday evening; on Wed- 
nesday evening a class of twenty-five girls 
meets to study Spanish and in that way prepare 
those who, later on, will work among their own 
people; on Thursday evening the regular prayer 
meeting is held, and on Friday evening the 
Epworth League at the Mary J. Piatt School 
meets. Saturday evening is devoted to the 
training class for Sunday school teachers. 

The oldest family in this church has been in 
the United States only about twenty years. 
Here, as elsewhere, it is found easier to win the 
Mexicans who have come into the United 
States recently than those who have been here 
for many years. The priests seem to be losing 
their control over the young people, but these 
same young people are responsive to the preach- 
ing of the gospel when it comes to them from 
individuals whose unselfish motives they can 
trust. 



CHRISTIAN MINISTER 53 

The fact that Mr. Costales, of Las Crucez, 
and his son, of Tucson, have been won to the 
Christian religion and have both become 
ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
is but an indication of the possibility of trans- 
forming the lives of many Mexicans who have 
more recently come into the United States. 

This story would not be complete, however, 
if we did not call attention to the fact that 
Mr. S. B. Garcia, the son of Mr. Silvestre Gar- 
cia, who, as the first pastor that ever went to 
Dona Ana, was the instrument in the con- 
version of Mr. Costales, is now the represen- 
tative of the Board of Sunday Schools of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, at Albuquerque, 
New Mexico. He is doing a fine work among 
the Mexican people in organizing and main- 
taining Sunday schools where the young people 
can be trained in the Christian religion. 



CHAPTER VII 

A LAND OF CONTRASTS 

Arizona is indeed a land of contrasts. It is 
a place where, as the proverb goes, "You dig 
for wood and climb for water." This is literally 
true, for the springs are in the mountains and 
roots on the dry plains are dug for fuel. The 
contrasts do not stop here, however: you may 
travel in Arizona through deserts that are as 
desolate as any to be found in the world and 
then suddenly come ripon a watered valley 
that is a second Garden of Eden, with oranges, 
lemons, dates, and almost every other kind of 
fruit growing in abundance. You may stand 
in valleys which are natural hot houses and 
look away to mountains covered with snow. 
You may travel through treeless plains, or, 
in the northern part of the State, go through 
forests of rich pine. Here in this interesting 
State rivers grow smaller as they proceed, 
rather than larger, but fortunately, here as 
elsewhere, the temperature goes down as you 
go up and goes up as you go down. This is a 
saving feature, for there are certain parts of 

54 



A LAND OF CONTRASTS 55 

Arizona from which it is well to be absent 
during the warm months of the summer. The 
climate is most healthful, yet the deaths from 
certain preventable diseases are numerous. 
This is due to the fact that so many people 
come here in the advanced stages of disease 
for health reasons. 

Here are vast stretches of open coutry, but 
curiously enough, no rural problem, at least 
in the sense in which we usually think of a 
rural problem. Arizona is one of the largest 
States in point of size which we have, yet it has 
not a single city of good size, so that the city 
problem is reduced to a minimum. New towns 
are springing up overnight, and some of the 
most ancient remains and the oldest commu- 
nities which we have in our country are here: 
the petrified forests, the Grand Canyon, and 
other wonders of nature, old beyond the calcu- 
lation of man. And in such towns as Tucson 
we discover old Spanish settlements, the age 
of which cannot readily be determined. In 
this unusual State grain is sown in December 
and threshed in May. 

And so we might go on to enumerate some 
of the strange and unusual things about Ari- 
zona and in such a category we would have to 



56 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

include the fact that the churches of Arizona 
are in many ways doing a far better piece of 
work than we would expect in so typically a 
frontier field. The 1918 meeting of the Arizona 
Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church was 
never held, as at the time scheduled for the 
meeting the State was overrun with influenza. 
At the 1919 session of the Mission held in 
Douglas the ministers were asked to tell, as the 
roll was called, some of the outstanding things 
about their work, and the following are a few 
of the items which a visitor noted as the men 
spoke for a few minutes each. 

One minister reported that the town in 
which he served was seven years ago nothing 
but a tent and a haystack. It now has a 
population of one thousand people, is a well- 
laid-out town with a beautiful new hotel 
costing nearly a million dollars, a new school- 
house worth some sixty thousand dollars, two 
fine business blocks, and other similar develop- 
ments. This spot has become a winter resort, 
and it is not surprising that the minister here 
wants some assistance in getting the church 
satisfactorily on to a working basis. Not far 
from this spot the Goodyear Rubber Company, 
of Akron, Ohio, has invested some five million 



A LAND OF CONTRASTS 57 

dollars in the growing of long staple cotton, 
which is particularly desirable for the making 
of tire fabrics. The Mormons are just starting 
in this community a twenty-five-thousand- 
dollar church, while the Methodist work is 
carried on in a frame shell thirty by fifty feet, 
w^ith a poor shack for a parsonage. The plan 
is to build here a twenty-five-thousand-dollar 
church, and the Centenary is to assist in 
making this plan effective. 

Another pastor reported his work as in one 
of the strongholds of Mormonism in the State, 
although the Gentiles are coming in rapidly. 
At this point the Mormons already have several 
attractive churches, and they are planning to 
erect a Mormon temple. Lots have been 
secured and the plans for the building are 
moving ahead rapidly. The Methodist Church 
in this field is inadequate, and outside aid must 
be secured if it is to continue to do the work 
which ought to be done. 

Another pastor reported that on each alter- 
nate Sunday he preached four times and drove 
eighty-five miles. Another indicated that 
two points which he had been serving had 
become so well developed that they must be 
separated and a new pastor secured for one. 



58 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

In one case the pastor and his family are 
living in the basement of the church because 
there is no other place available for them. 
One church reported a debt of more than eight 
thousand dollars wiped out and two other 
churches announced that during the year they 
had paid off their debts. 

The sudden end of the war and the consequent 
reduction of the demand for copper has had a 
marked effect upon certain communities where 
the population has suddenly been very greatly 
reduced. In a certain field where a fifty- 
thousand-dollar church was planned just before 
the United States went into the war, the 
building project has been held up, but it is 
now expected that it will move forward. One 
substantial church with a rather large Centenary 
apportionment reported raising its entire Cente- 
nary quota on one Sunday, although every 
one "knew" they couldn't do it. Another 
church in the alfalfa country raised one hundred 
and fifteen per cent of its Centenary quota, 
in spite of the fact that they had just received 
word that alfalfa had dropped to seven dollars 
per ton. Having got along so well with the 
raising of their quota, they turned about and 
immediately after raised the money to wipe 



A LAND OF CONTRASTS 59 

out a seven-hundred-dollar debt of the property. 
This church reported eighteen conversions 
during the year and thirty-six new members, 
with fifty per cent of their Centenary quota 
paid in at the time of the annual meeting. 

One pastor explained that while the popula- 
tion of his community had decreased sixty per 
cent during the war, a Centenary Committee 
made up of two Presbyterians, two Congrega- 
tionalists, one Catholic, six Methodist Episcopal 
members and one Southern Methodist put the 
Centenary across in fine shape. In this com- 
munity the Methodist Church is practically 
the only Protestant church' and this fine co- 
operation on the part of members of other 
denominations in the congregation is notable. 
Incidentally, the pastor reported that the 
Roman Catholic was converted as a result of 
the Centenary drive. 

Another pastor on a rural field reported a 
wonderful work with the young people, as many 
as sixty between sixteen and twenty-five years 
of age being in the congregation, and many of 
them driving four or five miles for the Ep worth 
League meeting. This same pastor also re- 
ported that after the Sunday-school session not 
a single individual left, but all stayed for the 



60 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

preaching service. Other churches reported 
Sunday schools so large that they could no 
longer meet in the church building; some were 
using schoolhouses for certain classes; others 
resorted to rooms in the parsonage; some had 
provided temporary makeshifts in the way of 
canvas covering, and other classes met entirely 
out of doors. 

The resourcefulness and ingenuity of one 
pastor was well demonstrated by the fact that 
he took advantage of a strike in the community 
to get his men to excavate under the building. 
The men responded so generously that a two- 
thousand-dollar basement was completed prac- 
tically without cost to the church, both the 
materials and labor being donated. The pastor 
in this same community reported that if he 
were to reach all the people in his community, 
it would be necessary for him to speak twenty- 
six different languages, as here are Greeks, 
Austrians, Finns, etc. This community has the 
distinction of being the first place in Arizona to 
deport I. W. W. agitators. Surely, the needs 
here are such as to demand the best in the way of 
equipment and staff. 

Although the Centenary quotas assigned to 
the churches in Arizona total more than one 



A LAND OF CONTRASTS 61 

hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they 
triumphantly raised more than their quotas. 

These glimpses of the work in this large and 
unusual State leave us with a feeling of opti- 
mism, for while there are many things to be 
done, and Arizona must for the time have 
outside help if they are to be done adequately, 
yet the reports indicate that the churches of 
Arizona are awake to their obligations and are 
measuring up in an admirable way to the needs 
of a most alluring field. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ABOLISHING "THE BORDER" AT 
DOUGLAS, ARIZONA 

Not long ago a certain Methodist minister 
received his first appointment to a "border" 
church in Arizona. He had not been long on 
the field when the family went for a drive and, 
of course, one of the chief points of interest was 
"the border." When they reached that line, 
marked only by a wire fence, although carefully 
guarded by United States soldiers, the chil- 
dren were very much interested. The guard 
stretched a point and allowed them to step 
across the line so that they stood on Mexican 
soil. The experience seemed almost to hyp- 
notize the children, for it was their first venture 
outside of the United States. They stood 
gazing away into Old Mexico and it was with 
difficulty that they were recalled. When they 
finally got back to American soil — although 
the distance could almost be measured in inches 
— they looked up at their mother and cried out 
with one accord, "Why, mother, I didn't see 
any border!" 

62 




Rev. John Burman, Douglas, Arizona 



ABOLISHING "THE BORDER" 63 

To be sure, the Rio Grande River flows for a 
considerable distance between Mexico and the 
United States. Certain strands of barbed wire 
do their best to create a border at other points, 
and where these give up the job in despair, 
concrete posts stand to remind the traveler of 
the fact that here Mexico and the United 
States meet. In spite of all this, however, in 
spite of all that we may desire, or that Congress 
may do, the bald fact remains that here, in 
our great Southwest, the United States stands 
face to face with Latin-America. We are 
neighbors, yes, next-door neighbors, whether 
we will it or not, and the things which transpire 
on either side of the border are of very vital 
interest to the neighbor next door. Little 
wonder that at some of these border points 
it is hard to determine whether the Christian 
work maintained should be classed as home 
or foreign missionary work. 

So far as the Rev. John Burman, pastor of 
the Mexican Methodist Episcopal Church, of 
Douglas, Arizona, is concerned, such slight 
distinctions as are raised by the terms "home" 
and "foreign," or even by actual international 
boundaries, have little significance. Although 
he is listed as a home missionary, Douglas, in 



64 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Arizona, and Agua Prieta, across the line in Old 
Mexico, are equally his fields of labor. These 
two towns practically merge. Were it not for 
the wire fence and the guard in the roadway, 
who steadfastly denies entrance or exit to any 
who do not have the proper credentials from the 
United States government, or from Mexico, 
they would form a single community. Yet 
there are many Mexicans almost within a 
stone's throw of the United States who have 
never stepped across the international line, and 
many more residents in Douglas who have never 
been inside of Mexico. 

These artificial barriers do not stand out as 
insurmountable obstacles to Mr. Burman, 
however. To him Mexicans are human beings 
with great spiritual needs, and the mere accident 
of living north or south of a wire fence does not 
weigh heavily on his mind. He finds them as 
responsive to a gospel of love on one side of the 
line as on the other. 

The story of John Burman himself is perhaps 
of equal interest to that of the remarkable 
work which he is doing; at least it would be 
hard to understand the work without knowing 
something about the worker. Mr. Burman 
was born in Sweden, but came to this couintry 



ABOLISHING "THE BORDER" 65 

and drifted to Arizona, where he found work 
in a copper smelter at Bisbee. From 189? to 
1900 he labored in Bisbee, and then for two 
years he served as furnace foreman in Old 
Mexico. After a sojourn in Nebraska he 
returned to Arizona and worked in the smelters 
at Douglas for two years. While in Douglas 
he was converted to Christianity. No sooner 
had he become a Christian than he felt an 
overwhelming desire to serve his Master in 
definite Christian work. He gave up a well 
paid job, attended school, married a trained, 
consecrated Christian young woman, and was 
appointed to Bolivia as a missionary. There 
he did effective work for six years, when he 
returned to this country. His experience in 
Old Mexico and his experience in Bolivia had 
given him not only a thorough knowledge of 
the Spanish language, but also a very definite 
understanding of the Spanish mind, and he was 
engaged to work among the Mexicans in our 
Southwest. To-day he is the beloved pastor 
of a fine congregation in Douglas and df another 
congregation across the line in Agua I^rieta, and 
he is ministering also, to some extent, at other 
border points. 

The schedule of this Swedish-American- 



66 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Mexican missionary is a rather strenuous one. 
At ten o'clock Sunday morning Sunday school 
is held in Douglas and at eleven o'clock the 
preaching service. Then Mr. Burman goes 
across the line into Old Mexico and conducts a 
Sunday school in Agua Prieta and preaches 
there. He then returns in the evening to 
Douglas and another preaching service is held. 
Tuesday there is Epworth League, Wednesday 
night a prayer meeting in Douglas, and Thurs- 
day night a cottage prayer meeting in Agua 
Prieta. Mr. Burman also goes regularly once 
a month to Naco, where he is maintaining an 
out station. On these trips he is obliged to 
sleep on the other side of the line on dirt floors, 
often with insufficient covering, and to eat the 
food which the common peon of Mexico can 
provide. If you could follow the work of this 
man from week to week, perhaps you would 
understand why he is so much beloved and 
why it has been said of him that in the trouble- 
some days of the past he did more to maintain 
satisfactory relations between Mexicans and 
Americans at this point on the border than any 
other individual. 

A short time ago the residents of Agua 
Prieta actually tore down the Catholic church 



ABOLISHING "THE BORDER" 67 

which has been built there, and as all the 
priests had already been driven from the State 
of Sonora, in which Agua Prieta is located, 
there was no one to protest. 1 In nearly every 
service which Mr. Burman holds there is some 
one who has never before heard the gospel. 
There are as many as twenty-five in attendance 
at the cottage prayer meetings in Agua Prieta. 
At present one of the immigration officials in 
this town provides the use of his home as a 
meeting place since there is no church in the 
community. This family was formerly a Cath- 
olic family, but they are now strong Protestant 
adherents. Last year Mr. Burman received 
thirty-eight new members into his church, and 
all but one of these were directly from the 
Roman Catholic Church, and all but one were 
adults. The superintendent of the large and 
prosperous Mexican Sunday school now held 
in the parsonage at Douglas is a man who was 
formerly an official under the Sonora govern- 
ment, but he now lives in the United States. 

Speaking of the work here, Mr. Burman says 
that it is easier to reach the Old Mexico Mexi- 



1 Since this chapter was written a new governor rules in 
Sonora. Some priests have returned and saloons were 
reopened for a time and then closed again. 



68 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

cans who have recently come into the United 
States than to reach the New Mexico Mexicans 
who have been here so long. The Old Mexico 
Mexicans are in a state of revolt against 
Catholicism and are much more open to the 
teaching of the gospel. "Mexico," says he, 
"is more friendly than ever toward Protestant- 
ism and intervention would be a great disaster." 
It is more difficult here to reach the ignorant 
and illiterate population than those who are 
educated, but about twenty per cent of those 
who are won to Christianity are illiterate. 

A few years ago Villa tried to take Agua 
Prieta. Although he did not succeed, he did 
make it somewhat uncomfortable for residents 
close to the border. At least it is annoying for 
a mother engaged in the task of putting her 
baby to bed to have a bullet enter the window 
and lodge itself in the opposite wall just over 
the baby. Nor is it always convenient to have 
several tons of baled hay piled around the 
home as a barricade, yet some families have 
passed through exactly these experiences. For- 
tunately, the local government in the State of 
Sonora has been good, and for the most part law 
and order have prevailed. Some time ago the 
State was made dry by order of the governor. 



ABOLISHING "THE BORDER" 69 

After this happened a Chinaman opened a 
saloon in Agua Prieta, but he was in jail before 
night. The business men in Douglas believe 
so thoroughly in the fine work which Mr. 
Burman is doing that they have provided the 
four lots which the church now owns. A com- 
fortable parsonage has been erected on two of 
the lots and it is now being used for church 
purposes until the new church is completed. 
The Centenary is helping to build this new 
church which is now nearing completion. 

In these days when there are so many selfish 
forces affecting our relations with Old Mexico 
and the Mexicans, it is encouraging to know 
that here, right at the heart of an important 
situation, we have a man and a work of which 
we may well be proud. If there be a solution 
for the Mexican problem, it would seem to lie 
along the lines of service already mapped out 
by Mr. Burman. 

One of the women who were taken into church 
membership recently was the wife of a Mexican 
who was strung to a telegraph pole on the 
other side of the border not long ago. The 
son is now in Albuquerque College receiving a 
Christian education. There are seven Mexi- 
can boys from Douglas in Albuquerque at 



70 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

present and there are several girls in the Mary 
J. Piatt School for Mexican girls, conducted 
by the Woman's Home Missionary Society in 
Tucson. 

One phase of need which we have as yet been 
unable to touch adequately in Douglas and 
Agua Prieta is that of medical attention. These 
poor Mexicans know little about hygiene or 
sanitation, and the conditions under which 
they live are most unsatisfactory. Disease 
is rampant. Mr. Burman tells of a beautiful 
Mexican girl who married a more or less 
ignorant Mexican and became diseased. She 
suffered greatly and finally went to a doctor 
for treatment. He gave her one treatment at a 
cost of fifty dollars and then refused to give 
more until the first bill was paid, this being 
cared for on the installment plan. In the mean- 
time the woman was unattended. Similar 
cases of need could be multiplied many times. 
Thus their ignorance and helplessness make 
them not only the prey of unnecessary disease 
but also the victims of unscrupulous and selfish 
exploiters. 

Some one here who could visit in the homes, 
help in establishing sanitary conditions, and 
particularly give advice and assistance when 



ABOLISHING "THE BORDER" 71 

the babies arrive, would be a most effective 
parish assistant. The Mexican people have 
been exploited by the church so long that they 
are notably responsive to kindness and help. 
Thus would much unnecessary suffering be 
avoided, while at the same time many a home 
and heart could be opened to the teaching of a 
religion which stands for clean living and fellow- 
ship with a loving Father God. And this is the 
sort of religion for which Mexicans have a great 
need, but of which they have had very little. 



CHAPTER IX 
MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM 

Possibly you like to think of Arizona as one 
immense unproductive desert. If so, there are 
certain trips which you should not make while 
visiting the State. One of these is a trip through 
the Salt River Valley, which radiates from 
Phoenix. It is an easy section to miss, for 
none of the transcontinental lines passing 
through Arizona go through Phoenix. If you 
desire to visit this remarkable region, you must 
either go south on the Santa Fe from Ash Fork, 
or north from the Southern Pacific Railroad at 
Maricopa. In any event the trip is well worth 
the trouble. 

The story of how this valley, which a few 
years ago was a worthless desert, has been 
developed is of considerable interest. Various 
private enterprises had tried to make use of the 
water of the Salt River for irrigation purposes, 
but little had been accomplished because the 
companies were handicapped for lack of funds 
and were obliged to attempt inadequate pro- 
jects close at hand. All the time they knew 

72 



MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM 73 

that some miles back up in the mountain 
nature had arranged one of the most admirable 
situations for a concrete dam which could well 
be conceived. At this point a substantial dam 
across a limited space would create a lake of 
large proportions. The problem was, how to 
get the money for the enterprise. 

The story now turns to no less a man than 
Theodore Roosevelt. When Roosevelt raised 
his company of Rough Riders at the time of the 
Spanish-American War a considerable number 
of them came from the vicinity of Phoenix. 
From these men Roosevelt is said to have 
learned of the needs and the opportunities pre- 
sented in the Salt River Valley. At the moment 
he was unable to do anything definite to help, 
but later when he became President this was 
one of the first irrigation projects to receive 
attention, and incidentally it was the first 
government irrigation project on a large scale 
to be carried through to successful completion. 
The large dam has always been known as the 
Roosevelt Dam. 

The dam itself is 284 feet high and 168 feet 
thick at the base; at the crest it is 20 feet thick. 
There is a 16-foot roadway on top of the dam. 
At the base the dam is only 210 feet long, but 



74 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

on the top it is 700 feet long. The foundation 
has been sunk 36 feet into bed rock. The lake 
which is formed by this dam covers 25 J^ 
square miles, or more than 16,000 acres. The 
first stone of this dam was laid September 20, 
1906, and the dam was completed and dedicated 
March 18, 1911. It was four years later before 
the reservoir was filled. The lake contains 
enough water to supply the lands in the valley 
with all the water needed for three years with- 
out the addition of another drop. Nearly 800 
miles of canals and laterals have been construct- 
ed to convey the water to the places where it 
is to be used. One of the interesting by- 
products of this irrigation project is the electric 
power generated. This amounts to 25,000 
horse power, and it is conveyed down through 
the valley into the city of Phoenix and to other 
towns. 

With the coming of water into the valley 
the entire aspect of the country began to change. 
Desert stretches became orchards, and cactus 
wastes were transformed into fertile fields. 
To-day if you travel down through the Salt 
River Valley, you might well imagine that you 
had come unexpectedly upon the Garden of 
Eden. Fruit of almost every kind grows in 



MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM 75 

abundance — peaches, apricots, pears, and many 
fine qualities of apples are grown here, while 
wonderful date palms hang loaded with lus- 
cious dates. Garden truck of every sort and 
flowers flourish. Alfalfa is a staple product, 
and seven or eight crops can be cut in one 
season. Cantaloupes grow in abundance. 

One of the most interesting developments, 
however, is that of the long-fiber cotton which 
is raised here. The government has for some 
years maintained an experimental station in 
the Salt River Valley, and they have developed 
from seed originally obtained from Egypt a 
species of cotton which is of a very superior 
quality. Because of that fact automobile 
concerns are already investing large sums of 
money in this region in the cotton industry. 
The long-fiber cotton makes an unusually 
tough fabric for automobile tires and it is said 
to be especially good also for typewriter ribbons 
and other special uses, such as aeroplane wings. 

This large development, of course, spells 
responsibility and opportunity for the Christian 
Church, and the churches find it difficult to 
keep pace with the needs. A number of 
Methodist Episcopal churches have been built, 
but already Sunday schools in the valley are so 



76 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

large that the little one-room churches originally 
constructed are too small to contain them. 
Temporary structures are erected outside, and 
in spite of that device some classes are obliged 
to meet in the parsonage, in the schoolhouse, or 
out of doors the year around if they meet at all. 
This is notably true at Glendale. 

Glendale is located in the valley seven miles 
northwest of Phoenix. The Methodist Episco- 
pal church, which was built there some years 
ago, seats one hundred and thirty people. 
The Sunday school, with an enrollment of 
three hundred and ninety, already has out- 
grown the church. There has been constructed 
in the rear of the church a temporary board 
and canvas protection which is used for the 
younger grades in the Sunday school. A large 
young people's class, the first and second 
intermediate grades and the third and fourth 
junior classes have, however, no room in which 
to meet, and during the entire twelve months of 
the year they meet out of doors. 

There are four thousand people in the school 
district, and the region round about is a rich 
agricultural, dairying, and poultry-raising sec- 
tion. Cotton is one of the chief crops, and 
much alfalfa is raised. A large condensed- 



MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM 77 

milk factory has also been erected. There is 
'bus service between Phoenix and Glendale 
every half hour. The growth here has been 
very rapid, but the church has not kept pace 
with the growth of the town. The Centenary 
is to help remedy this by making possible a new 
and adequate building. 

Mesa, another town in the valley seventeen 
miles southeast of Phoenix, was founded some 
years ago by the Mormons and the present 
population of seven thousand is thirty-five 
per cent Mormon. There are already several 
attractive and well-attended Mormon churches 
in the community and they have recently 
raised two hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
for the building of a Mormon temple. The 
Mormon Church is adding another two hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars and the temple when 
completed will cost six hundred thousand 
dollars. This, it is expected, will make Mesa 
the Mormon capital of the Southwest, so that 
it will no longer be necessary for Mormons who 
wish to be baptized or married in a Mormon 
temple to make a trip to Utah. 

For a long time it was impossible for the 
Methodist Episcopal Church to secure property 
in Mesa, owing to the regulations put in force 



78 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

by the Mormon Church, but later a location 
was secured and a building erected. At present 
the Methodist Church is perhaps the strongest 
Gentile church in town. Its property is at 
present valued at twenty-five thousand dollars, 
and there is no debt. There are more than two 
hundred members in the Sunday school and a 
fine work is being carried on. It will not, 
however, be possible permanently to maintain 
a high standard of work without a church 
adapted to community service. A community 
house is much needed and work should also be 
undertaken for the Mexicans, of whom there 
are many in Mesa. 1 The Mormons here are 
good proselyters, and already they have demon- 
strated their ability along this line by their 
work among the Gentiles who are now moving 
into the region in considerable numbers, and 
also among the Mexicans. Surely here, if any- 
where, the church can afford to do its very best 
work. 



1 Since the above was written the local Methodist Church 
has built a neat chapel in the Mexican quarter of town and 
is carrying on work there. 



CHAPTER X 
A MODERN FAIRY STORY 1 

Eight or nine years ago a snapshot would 
have told practically the entire story of the 
work of the Methodist Episcopal Church for 
Mexicans in Southern California. 

To-day the work presents a continuous pano- 
rama, extending from Los Angeles down through 
the fertile and productive valleys of California 
to the international line at Calexico and Mexi- 
cali. More than thirty preaching stations 
opened, a Christian school for Mexican boys 
established at Gardena, Sunday schools organ- 
ized, a fine group of earnest and faithful workers 
built up, human lives transformed, and a large 
practical program for extending and strength- 
ening the work in the immediate future by the 
erection of new buildings and the making 
possible of a better and more varied service 
for the Mexicans — these are some of the things 

1 ( While this chapter refers chiefly to the Latin American 
work in Southern California it should be remembered that 
the Methodist Episcopal Church has a Spanish Mission in 
San Francisco, Portuguese work in San Pablo, Oakland, and 
in the San Joaquin Valley, and a number of missions for 
Mexicans at other points north of Los Angeles.) 

79 



80 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

which stand out in contrast to the past to 
remind us that something has been happening 
recently in California. 

As a matter of fact, however, such remarkable 
developments do not "just happen." Fine 
pieces of work are always the result of the 
patient effort of fine men, and the recent devel- 
opment of the Mexican work in California is 
no exception to the rule. 

In the year 1911 the Rev. Vernon M. Mc- 
Combs found himself in California in need of 
rest and physical recuperation after a strenuous 
period of missionary service in South America, 
where he acted as district superintendent of 
Peru. Arrived in the land of sunshine, deter- 
mined to make the most of it for the sake of his 
health and his future usefulness, Dr. McCombs 
did not welcome enthusiastically an invitation 
to speak in a little Mexican mission inadequately 
supported and carried on under very unprom- 
ising conditions by a few consecrated Methodist 
young people in Los Angeles. The visit was to 
have many unforeseen results, for it was in his 
attempt to help in this mission that there was 
laid upon Dr. McCombs's heart the burden of 
responsibility for the Mexicans of Southern 
California. 



A MODERN FAIRY STORY 81 

For decades these generous-hearted neighbors 
from Mexico had shared largely in the produc- 
tion of the oranges, lemons, walnuts, sugar 
beets, alfalfa, beans, and multitudinous other 
products of California. They had tended the 
sheep and the cattle, built the houses, construct- 
ed and cared for the railroads and performed 
much of the other useful labor. For years 
thousands of Mexicans had drifted into the city 
of Los Angeles and then drifted out again, and 
the church took little notice of them. A poorly 
supported mission in Los Angeles and a weak 
church, housed in a crude wooden building in 
Pasadena, comprised the list of Methodist 
enterprises for Mexicans. The rest of the 
field was practically untouched. 

With the advent of Dr. McCombs things 
began to change, not rapidly at first, but 
steadily and surely, until to-day the church is 
conducting a steadily enlarging and improving 
ministry of which it may well be proud. It 
would be difficult to describe all of the fine 
enterprises now in process, but we can note 
some of the things which have been accom- 
plished. 

At Pasadena the crude little building has 
given way to one of the most attractive and 



82 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

commodious churches for Protestant Mexicans 
to be found in the United States. A fine Sun- 
day school and other regular services are con- 
ducted, a day nursery is maintained, a hotel for 
young Mexicans is run by the church, and other 
lines of welfare activity are carried on. Re- 
cently the Bonita Hand Laundry giving work 
to Latin Americans, and with the motto, 
"There is no help that helps folks like the help 
that helps them to help themselves/ ' formed a 
part of this varied service. 

The pastor here at Pasadena is the Rev. A. C. 
Gonzales, who went from tending a saloon to 
Albuquerque College and then entered the 
Christian ministry, instead of returning to the 
saloon. He is a most efficient and successful 
worker, and he has won many Mexicans to 
Jesus Christ. A recent report of this Pasadena 
church indicates that in a single year there has 
been a one hundred per cent increase of member- 
ship with no loss of members. A considerable 
proportion of his converts have been young men, 
and others only recently from Mexico. One 
young man, converted in 1919, was a captain 
in Villa's forces when the United States entered 
Vera Cruz. He is now studying at Gardena to 
become a Christian minister. The following 



A MODERN FAIRY STORY 83 

telegram, dated January 18, 1920, was received 
by Dr. McCombs from this young man : 

Brother, I leave Ajo the 27th, ready for the school. 
Save me a place. Pray for me that I may succeed in the 
way in which I have started. Yours in Christ. 

(Translated from the Spanish original.) 

The Spanish American Institute at Gardena 
is itself a product of the last few years. It was 
evident from the very first that the work never 
could be placed upon a firm foundation unless 
some opportunity were provided for training 
Christian Mexican leaders. It was in response 
to this very obvious need that the Spanish 
American Institute was organized. This insti- 
tution is a school for boys located at Gardena, 
eleven miles from the center of Los Angeles, 
Already a considerable tract of land has been 
secured and a number of attractive buildings 
have been erected. The school at present is 
filled to capacity, with something over sixty 
boys and young men enrolled, but the plans 
call for extra buildings which will make it 
possible to accomodate two hundred. Here the 
boys will not only be taught the usual subjects, 
but also how to do woodwork and various kinds 
of metal work, how to set type and run a 
printing press, how to raise crops and care for 



84 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

animals, and how to do other useful things. 
Best of all, however, they are taught the Bible, 
and learn about Jesus Christ and are trained 
in the Christian way of life. Recently a Theo- 
logical and Bible Training Department has been 
added to the school. 

Many of the pupils come from poor homes, 
and it is necessary for some good friends to 
furnish the scholarships which will make their 
attendance possible. That the school and all 
it means is thoroughly appreciated is well 
illustrated by one little boy, who said, "O, I 
wish I could stay here a hundred years." One 
of the first, if not the first Centenary building 
project in the United States, was the new 
industrial building which was erected here at 
Gardena, and which is now completed and 
being put to good use by the boys. The 
printing presses which have been established 
in this building are not only self-supporting 
but also revenue-producing. 

Of course the center of all this excellent 
Mexican work in California is the old Spanish 
Plaza in Los Angeles. This is the center of one 
of the largest Mexican communities in the 
United States. The little mission of a few years 
ago has become a great institution, and the 



A MODERN FAIRY STORY 85 

work has been so extended that many workers 
are employed. There is not only an organized 
church, Sunday school, and Epworth League, 
but there are also open-air services on the 
Plaza, clinics for the needy, Goodwill Indus- 
tries, and an employment bureau for the un- 
employed, Goodwill stores for the poor, kinder- 
garten classes, and clubs for boys and girls, 
visitors for the homes, special service for 
prisoners, and many other ministries. 

The Goodwill Industries has already re- 
ceived through the generosity of friends a large, 
convenient and valuable building just near the 
Plaza, and here the workshops and the stores 
are located. Facing on the Plaza itself val- 
uable lots have already been secured, and the 
Centenary is to make possible the erection of 
a fine institutional church, where the various 
activities now operating from temporary quar- 
ters can be housed. Surely nothing could be 
more appropriate than the erection here on 
the Plaza, 1 which for more than a century has 
been the center of the Latin-American life of 
the Southwest, of a commanding Protestant 

1 Plans for a railroad terminal may modify the exact 
location of the building, but it will not materially affect the 
general program of the enterprise. 



86 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

institution which shall register in no uncertain 
terms something of our real, though often 
unacknowledged, interest in these Mexican 
friends who have come to make their home with 
us, and who are at present contributing such a 
large proportion of the needful labor in our great 
Southwest. 

Governor Ruiz, of Mexico, called at the 
office some time ago and said: "The passions 
of our people must be restrained and educated. 
You folks are laying down just such a moral 
and social program as our people need. It is 
just what the Mexicans want. I am deeply 
interested and will look further into your great 
work. That Plaza community center is just 
the right thing, I congratulate you upon it." 

There is not space to tell of the work at 
Santo Ana, Orange, Wintersburg, Westminster, 
Anaheim, Fullerton, Placentia, Glendora, Rive- 
ra, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Compton, 
Watts, Glendale, Lamanda Park, San Fernando, 
Fillmore, Bardsdale, Ventura, Santa Paula, 
and numerous other places. One of the most 
interesting and needy places is Calexico, on the 
Mexican border. The situation and the plans 
developing there are described elsewhere in this 
book. 



A MODERN FAIRY STORY 87 

Perhaps the finest achievement of all, how- 
ever, is the consecrated and efficient group of 
workers which Dr. McCombs has gathered 
about him during these years of work. The 
spirit of service is everywhere evident, and the 
efficiency, kindliness, and loyalty of the workers 
is the very best promise for the future. Dr. 
McCombs has been made superintendent of 
Latin- American work for the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension, and in this 
larger relationship he is doing much to help the 
Christian Church interpret its professed religion 
in such concrete terms that our Mexican 
friends cannot mistake its meaning. 

The coming of the Centenary marks a new 
day for our Latin-Americans of the Southwest, 
for with better buildings, better equipment, 
and more and better-trained workers, the work 
which has already brought joy into the lives of 
thousands will move forward with a fresh 
impetus. 



CHAPTER XI 

REACHING REAL PEOPLE IN 
CALIFORNIA 

The results of any missionary endeavor must 
be summed up sooner or later in terms of the 
lives of individuals reached. The raising of 
money, the building of buildings, and all other 
external activities find their justification only 
as they affect human lives. The individuals 
affected by the home missionary activities of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church are so many in 
number that it is hard to get anything approxi- 
mating an adequate picture of the results 
achieved. We, however, can understand the 
transformation of particular individuals. The 
following stories taken from the Mexican work 
in the Southwest are typical. 

A Transformed Gambler 

The rapid development of the work among 
the Mexicans in Southern California has brought 
forth many interesting instances of unusual 
transformations, but possibly none more remark- 
able than that of Ramon Ponce. In order to 

88 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 89 

understand his conversion, however, we must 
go back and tell of Emilio Hernandez. Emilio 
was an ignorant Mexican peon who had come 
over to the United States, but who nine years 
ago could not read nor write any language. 
Emilio was converted and, after his conversion, 
was very eager to preach the gospel. It would 
have seemed that he was not particularly well 
qualified for preaching, as he had little educa- 
tion. However, he was given a very small 
support of seven dollars per month and he 
began work among his own people. During 
the first year of his efforts seventy Mexicans 
were led to Jesus Christ, and among these 
Ponce was included. Ponce himself was a 
former gambler, revolutionist, and jail bird in 
Old Mexico. He did his best to break up the 
services which Hernandez tried to hold among 
the Mexicans, but Hernandez stayed by his 
task and was rewarded by seeing Ponce himself 
converted. Ponce is a natural-born leader 
among his people, and he is now Mayordomo 
of the workers in the orange and walnut groves 
in a large territory in Southern California. 
He is superintendent of the Sunday school and 
has been made local preacher. He is learning 
to read, and two of his children were recently 



90 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

baptized by Dr. Vernon M. McCombs, with 
whom the reader already is acquainted. 

Hernandez, who won Ponce, has kept on with 
his good work; he has learned to read and to 
write, and he is now half through the Conference 
course of study. The conversion of Ponce — a 
man of such wide influence among the Mexicans 
— was indeed an achievement; and if the work 
of Hernandez had resulted in nothing else, it 
would have been worth considerably more 
than the seven dollars per month which the 
church allowed for this work; but in addition 
we must remember that Hernandez has influ- 
enced for good hundreds of other Mexicans who 
without him never perhaps would have heard the 
gospel. 

Stenographer to Madero 
If you visit the headquarters of the Goodwill 
Industries carried on in connection with the 
Plaza work of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
at Los Angeles, California, you may see working 
steadily and patiently at a sewing machine a 
small, quiet Mexican woman, but unless you 
know the inside story you will perhaps fail to 
appreciate all that her work there means. 
Some time ago this woman and her daughter, 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 91 

Miss Guadalupe Chazari, became interested in 
the work at the Plaza. They were recently 
from Old Mexico, and the daughter had been 
personal stenographer to Madero when he was 
President of Mexico. Coming to this country, 
it was not altogether easy for them to get 
established in the new life, but the Plaza work 
made that step a much more simple one. The 
daughter became filled with a desire to do 
definite religious work. The Missionary Train- 
ing School at San Francisco offered just the 
sort of course which she needed. The problem 
was how to take advantage of the opportunity 
which could be seen in the distance. By this 
time, however, the mother had become so 
interested and devoted to the work in the 
Goodwill Industries of the Plaza that she freely 
and gladly urged her daughter to go on to San 
Francisco, saying that she would be in the 
hands of friends and be able to support herself 
by her work in the Goodwill establishment 
while the daughter prepared herself for her 
chosen work. Thus the daughter is studying 
and the mother is working, and both are con- 
tent. 

One of Miss Chazari's companions at San 
Francisco is Miss Josephine Rios, another 



92 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

member of the Plaza church and a graduate of 
the Frances De Pauw Industrial School, con- 
ducted by the Woman's Home Missionary 
Society. The following letter sent to Dr. 
McCombs by Miss Rios, just after her arrival in 
San Francisco, really speaks for both girls. 
It gives something of an idea of their fine 
character and of the ideals and ambitions which 
dominate them. 

129 Haight St., San Francisco, Cal. 
Sept. 29, 1919. 
Dear Dr. McCombs: 

Our trip out here was very delightful. We started 
last Monday, September 23, and we arrived here Wednes- 
day. There were only two who got seasick, but I did not 
get to feed the fishes. Some of us do not like this town, 
but as we did not come for that purpose our duty is set 
before us. 

Sunday: Miss Garcia, Miss Munoz, and three others, 
with myself, went down and located the Mexicans. We 
did not know where they were found. So the girls told 
me to ask a policeman. They always put me forth, so if 
anything happens I will be the first. Don't you think 
that's unfair? I do. But I did, and he told us. So we 
walked and walked, climbed hills and all, until at last we 
found them. I tell you we have a mighty hard job before 
us, but we are going to get at it even if we have to be 
stoned. 

In the midst of all the Mexicans we have two Catholic 
churches and a convent. We visited one, and in front 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 93 

knelt a little Mexican woman praying to her saints, and 
as I talked with some of them, they were mostly Catholics. 
Some were interested when I told them we were training 
for life workers and we five came to help them. We 
petted the children and showed them we wanted to take 
nothing but to give. After walking a little more we came 
to a little mission, but we were late for the afternoon so 
we planned to go in the evening which we did. It is con- 
ducted by a Portuguese man, Redolfo Lima. He says he 
has heard about you and knows some of the workers. 
Before going in we girls planned to say something, at 
least, a Bible verse. You see these girls here are not used 
to speaking in public, so to each was given a Bible verse, 
and I was glad when the preacher asked for testimony 
they were the first. I wanted this so that the Mexicans 
could see we were there to do our duty. 

There were lots of children and we are planning to 
organize a Sunday school so that the little children may 
not come at night, for they need their sleep. Also we are 
planning to give a social and in that way interest the young 
people. We have work enough before us. The priest 
will soon be scolding while we'll be calling and doing their 
job. The first thing we want is to get the little children, 
and they will invite their parents. That's why I've 
chosen the kindergarten course. It took prayer and time 
to choose, but I think I have chosen right, and I know God 
wants me to do it. I thought of this, "A little child shall 
lead them." And when the Plaza church is built, I want 
a room to myself where I can have a little kindergarten 
for children, that is, if you will give it to me. And when 
I graduate and the church is not built, I shall start one 
anyway. Next summer, if it is God's will, I want to go 



94 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

and have a little kindergarten for the children as they 
begin once before. I have seen a brighter, higher life 
and I will not look back no more but forward to a better 
work. 

Sunday, at ten o'clock, I knelt down in my room before 
going to church and prayed for my church at the Plaza for 
at that moment, Sunday school perhaps was beginning. 
A vacant place, perhaps now occupied by some one better, 
passed my mind. And also for those men out in the Plaza. 
I've given my life to Him and I'll go to the slums if I am 
to get the little children. 

Mr. Stevens is very nice, and when I see you I am going 
to fine you for talking about me. I am not worthy of 
it all, and now he is passing it on. The other day at the 
table he was talking about me. So you see I have some- 
thing against you now. Pray for us. We need your 
prayer and our work is being done because we belong to 
you and we want our work to grow larger. We need a 
few Mendoza hymn books and Testaments to distribute. 
We would like them if you can spare them — that is the 
plea of us girls. 

The Lord bless you also in your work is our prayer. 
Your friend, 

(Signed) Josephine Rios. 

To secure for the church young women of 
such ability and with such fine consecration 
and to be able to see them prepared and ready 
to undertake serious work in an efficient manner 
is to set into operation forces which are not to be 
lightly regarded, for they can and will make a 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 95 

very large contribution to the Mexican work 
in the Southwest. 

One Hundred Fires 
The name "Cienfuegos" means "one hundred 
fires," and it is an appropriate name for one 
of the recent Mexican converts in Southern 
California. His first name is Miguel — which 
is equivalent to "Michael" — and he is a typical 
strong Mexican. The "lima bean empire" of 
California knows this man all too well. He was 
one of the roughest of the rough, a hard drinker, 
and an adept at almost every kind of sin. In 
his own language, his "cards were his God," 
for he was a gambler of no small reputation. 
He had no use for religion of any sort, but the 
Mexican work of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in California reached even this man 
and he was soundly converted. After his 
conversion he gave up his clasp bowie knife as a 
testimony of his complete submission to the 
principles of peace. The following transla- 
tion from the Spanish gives in his own words 
the testimony of Cienfuegos himself: 

0, I have been one of the most abandoned men that 
could be found in this world. I waded through every 
vice, drunkenness, gambling, and some other vices which 



96 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

were bad for me. I was a man who, when he had a pack 
of cards in his hands, said that he had God. For me there 
was no other God; there was no church; there was nothing 
in the way of righteousness for me. I did not believe in 
God. 

My friends said to me, "You do not believe in God." I 
answered them that all those who believed in him were 
crazy. And I also said to them, "Show me God that I 
may believe in him," and they told me that what I asked 
was an impossibility, and I never believed in anything. 

But at length I had a faithful friend — Stephen Domin- 
guez (himself recently saved by our Antonio Jimenez) — 
who one evening came to my house and invited me to 
accompany him to a meeting which they were going to 
have. I answered my friend that I did not believe in God, 
but he quietly replied that it made no difference. "Come 
along and spend a little while." Then it was hard for me to 
give in, but in the end I went to the great meeting. My 
friend gave me one of the papers, and said to me, "Inform 
yourself well about these papers; take in their meaning." 
Then I examined them that same night and saw that they 
looked of importance and went back again with my friend 
asking for other papers and a beautiful book, which con- 
vinced me that the road which I was taking was bad. 

Then I kneeled down by the side of my bed and asked 
God to forgive me the evil which I had done in the world 
and I gave myself to my God to be faithful forever. And 
that same night, I said to myself, "To-morrow I will take 
my gambling outfit" — which I had all fitted up — "and set 
fire to it"; and at the same time I put it in the fire, I said, 
"O God, do not let me return to my evil ways; blot them 
out of rememberance." 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 97 

And up to the present time there has been a great 
change like that from night to day. I have a hunger for 
peace and am following the good way of God. And I will 
follow this blessed road wherever it may lead (through 
life, through death). 

(Signed) Miguel Cienfuegos. 

Fillmore, Cal. 

The pastor, Antonio Jimenez, who won 
Cienfuegos, was himself one of the early converts 
of the Mexican work in California developed 
by Dr. Vernon M. McCombs. Thus we see 
how each faithful convert multiplies himself 
again and again. 

A Street Boy 
One condition which impresses the visitor 
to the Plaza section of Los Angeles is that of 
the large number of uncared-for children who 
live in gangs, ramble about the streets, lodge 
in the open, beg, kill time, swear, sing filthy 
songs, and engage in various other sorts of 
occupations to make life passably interesting. 
Some of the houses around here have no chairs, 
no sanitary conveniences, no bed, no stoves, 
and practically none of the furnishings which we 
think essential to a home. Benito was one of 
these boys who knew little of the meaning of a 
real home. The following is a description of 



98 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Benito given by a former Plaza worker, now 
Mrs. Esther Turner Wellman: 

Benito wore on his head what was left of the crown of an 
old felt hat. There was a hole in this crown through which 
a sprig of his hair stuck out. He was barefoot. He had 
only one suspender and one button. I could not help but 
think of the responsibility of that one button. Benito's 
mother has had nine children. His father was in jail; 
he had been an expressman on the Plaza, had been accused 
of stealing iron. This was the third time he had been in 
jail. Benito's mother presented a pitiful sight one Sunday 
afternoon as she told me that since her husband was in 
jail the horse was dying. She held a pale little child in 
her arms which she had nursed for two years because she 
could not afford to buy milk for the babe. Benito told me 
how he had wished to help his mother, so he bought some 
blacking, went to the Plaza and tried to work as a boot- 
black. It was Saturday and he had earned twenty-five 
cents. He told how he had passed a restaurant; the dishes in 
the window made him so hungry that he decided to enter. 
He did not intend to spend all of his twenty-five cents, 
but just a little part of it and take the rest to his mother. 
To his disappointment as he left he did not have sufficient 
to pay his bill. That Sunday afternoon as he told me 
the story I took him in my arms and kissed him. After 
that Benito was always waiting on the street corner long 
before time for Sunday school to begin. 

Refugees From Across the Border 
The stories of the refugees who have been 
coming across the line from Old Mexico for 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 99 

several years would fill several volumes, but 
the following account of a single family is 
typical of the experiences through which many 
have passed. When the members of this family 
were found by one of the Plaza workers, they 
had just arrived from Mexico; they had 
"bummed" their way to America, sometimes on 
top of trains, sometimes in freight cars. Some 
one gave them cold meat and crackers to keep 
them from starving. When they were dis- 
covered in Los Angeles it was raining; they had 
no stove on which to cook or by which to keep 
warm; there were no beds in the house and 
there was no food. A child in the center of 
the floor was crying for something to eat. In 
spite of these untoward circumstances they 
had taken into the home a little Mexican boy 
whose father had run off with another woman, 
thus increasing the family to six. The members 
of this family became faithful attendants at the 
Mission and were converted to Christianity. 
One of the girls, seventeen years old, was given 
some scripture to commit to memory, and three 
days later she had it all learned. The older 
members of the family attended night school 
because they wished to learn the English lan- 
guage and to become good Americans. 



100 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

What It Means 

Thus the stories might be multiplied of those 
who are being reached, both around the Los 
Angeles Plaza and in the more than thirty 
other stations in California at which Mexican 
work is being conducted by the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. If anything has been clear- 
ly demonstrated, it is the fact that the Mexicans 
of California can be reached by the church when 
once we approach them with a heart of love and 
sympathy. The Centenary is to help in one 
way or another practically every one of the 
fields in which work for Mexicans is now being 
carried on in California, and it is to make possi- 
ble the opening up of new fields where the 
Mexicans now are entirely neglected. 

We have a double responsibility for these 
Mexicans in the United States, for while many 
of them are so very needy, they are spending 
their lives in service for us : they pick and pack 
the oranges and lemons and various other kinds 
of fruits in California; they pick the walnuts 
which we enjoy so much at Christmas time and 
throughout the year; they build railroads and 
construct houses, bridges, and highways; they 
raise melons and every sort of garden vegetable; 
they produce the sugar beets out of which 



REACHING REAL PEOPLE 101 

millions of pounds of sugar are manufactured; 
they grow flowers; they herd sheep and tend 
cattle, and in fact, in many sections, do most 
all of the necessary labor. There is hardly an 
individual in the United States who is not 
more or less directly indebted to our Mexican 
friends for some of the necessities or comforts 
of life. Surely, if for no other reason than this, 
it is no more than fair that we should help them 
in the establishment of churches and Sunday 
schools and the creation of such conditions of life 
as will enable them to become good and intelli- 
gent American citizens. 



CHAPTER XII 
STORIES FROM GARDENA 

The Spanish-American Institute, the school 
for Mexican boys at Gardena, California, takes 
boys from ten to eighteen years of age. Many 
of the boys are from very poor homes and some 
can speak little or no English. To the workers 
in this school falls the fascinating task of trans- 
forming the habits, and often the very spirit, 
of these boys at the same time that they are 
learning the things prescribed in the curriculum. 
The education of the boys does not stop when 
they leave the classroom. Everything from 
the sleeping and eating arrangements to church 
attendance and Boy Scout activities is planned 
to make its contribution to the development of 
the boys. 

The health of the boys is proverbially good, 
due to wholesome food and regular habits. 
The boys sleep in a screened porch and are fed 
a simple, well-balanced diet. It is said that a 
new arrival could be picked out by a stranger 
merely from the fact that his face is paler and 
his muscles more flabby. To an increasing 

102 



STORIES FROM GARDENA 103 

degree the food used at the Institute is raised 
on the farm belonging to the school, so that a 
mixture of work, gymnasium, play, and study 
soon builds strong bodies. 

The following stories told in the words of 
Helen Pitner Howe, of the Institute, introduce 
us to some of these "real boys." 

We so often think of the remark of that inimi- 
table character, Mrs. Ruggles: "If folks would 
only say, *0, children will be children/ but they 
won't. They'll say, 'Land o 9 goodness, who 
fetched them children up?* " 

The workers at the Institute are in a state 
of anxiety while visitors are being entertained, 
or while our large family is at church, lest some 
boy who has been here only a short time will 
behave in a manner not smiled upon by the 
most select society. Recently there came to us 
a "diamond in the rough" — that is, the rough- 
ness is quite apparent; and we are hoping after 
much polishing, to be rewarded by the sparkle. 

He arrived on Sunday morning, and his 
clothes were in a condition so dilapidated that 
he could not wear them to church. The 
matron searched in the closet where she keeps 
the donations sent in by friends and managed to 
find a suit. Then she buttoned him into the 



104 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

first collar he had ever worn. He submitted 
very ungraciously. 

In church the boys occupied the first few 
pews in the middle section, and the new boy 
sat on the front row. During the sermon the 
matron noticed his agonized efforts to turn his 
head, and finally to her mortification, he re- 
moved his necktie, unbuttoned his collar, rubbed 
his chafed neck, and then turned to observe 
the congregation. He explained afterward to 
the matron that he had to take off the stiff thing 
because he could not look sideways. 

The superintendent had two of the boys with 
him to speak at a Sunday service and they were 
entertained for dinner at a very beautiful home. 
The hostess left the room for a moment and 
one of the boys burst out with, "O Mister, looky 
this rug! I saw one just like it in a store 
window down town, and it wasn't nearly as big 
as this one, and it was marked seventy-five 
dollars. And, O! looky that chair with those 
little thin legs; you couldn't sit on that without 
bustin' it, could you?" 

Shortly after the holiday season one of the 
smaller boys greatly delighted a Sunday morn- 
ing audience with his recitation about "Herbie 
Hoover." After the service an elderly gentle- 



STORIES FROM GARDENA 105 

man approached him, and putting his hand on 
the lad's head said, "God bless you, my boy." 
Christmas greetings being fresh in his mind, he 
replied: "The same to you, mister." 

Our halls are covered with heavy matting, 
which may not be beautiful, but is safe for 
unwary feet. It is not surprising, then, that 
when one of the boys was visiting in a home 
where the floors are highly polished, his feet 
became utterly unmanageable. 

He assumed an air of composure, which he 
was far from feeling as he followed the hostess 
across the hall to the dining room; but one small 
rug slipped — as small rugs will — and great was 
his chagrin to find himself lying on the floor, 
gazing at the ceiling. 

So many people ask if the Mexican boys are 
anything at all like real American boys. Boy 
nature is the same, regardless of nationality. 
The following incident could have happened 
anywhere: 

One day before school opened last fall there 
came a sharp knock at the door. Before the 
teacher on duty could answer, the knock was 
repeated. When the door was opened a nervous 
little Mexican woman entered, leading a small 
boy by the hand. She was in such distress of 



106 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

mind that she almost forgot to greet the teacher 
with the courtesy which is characteristic of the 
Spanish. 

"The man tell me bringa my boy to dis 
school, and' I come queek to see it. I look in 
da beeg house nex' to dis an' alia dose boys 
fight-fight-fight! I don' wanta my Henree to 
fight ; dey might hurt heem. Hees mamma dead ; 
I hees aunty." 

The teacher heroically overcame her desire 
to laugh, and explained to Henry's anxious rel- 
ative that the boys were merely wrestling in the 
gymnasium, and that it was very good exercise 
for them. Aunty accepted the explanation of 
the horrors she had witnessed, but her uneasi- 
ness by no means disappeared. 

Henry seemed to be a very shy and inoffen- 
sive sort of youngster. It was quite plain that 
aunty had him securely attached to her apron 
strings, so that no harm could befall him. 

A tour of inspection was made about the 
ranch, and every time a group of boys was met, 
Henry's aunt stopped and talked excitedly in 
Spanish, saying that she was going to bring her 
boy to the school to stay, and would they please 
take good care of him and not ever hit him; 
and would they please not let any bad boys 



STORIES FROM GARDENA 107 

fight him. Poor soul, she had no idea what a 
pit she was digging for little Henry. 

The teacher took them to the gymnasium 
to show the little woman that the play indulged 
in by the boys was not only harmless but very 
beneficial. Henry seemed fascinated as he 
watched one boy after another leap over the 
"buck 55 and land on the mat. Suddenly he 
snatched his hand away from his aunt's and 
like a flash he was over the "buck 55 and on the 
mat, mixed up with four or five other boys. 
His aunt's face plainly pictured her amazement 
and disapproval. Grasping him by the arm 
she poured a veritable stream of talk into his 
unwilling ear. 

Time passed, and the first day of school came. 
Boys were arriving throughout the entire day, 
keeping the matrons busy getting them settled. 
The afternoon brought Henry, and his aunt 
left him after repeated admonitions to be a good 
boy. She kept looking back over her shoulder, 
expecting to see her darling injured in some 
way. No doubt she wondered why Henry's 
father insisted upon sending him to such a 
dangerous place. 

Remarks about "aunty's baby 55 and "fraidy 
cat" were apparently unheeded by Henry. He 



108 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

waited, perhaps out of delicacy of feeling, for 
his aunt to get out of sight, and then with an 
energy born of long restraint, "aunty's baby" 
proceeded joyfully to "wipe up the earth" 
with the first boy his size on whom he could 
lay his hands. That job completed, he ap- 
proached another with military precision, and 
Henry was a recognized member of the frater- 
nity of real boys, proudly wearing his badge of a 
skinned nose, before the matron could reach 
the battlefield. 

Of course, fighting is not permitted, and Is 
dealt with very severely by the boys themselves 
in their court; but this happened on the first 
day of school when the Honorable Judge was 
not on the bench, and the Policeman was 
probably in the kitchen inquiring of the cook if 
she had forgotten how to make cakes and pies 
during vacation. 

Pedro, the Runaway 

Have you ever seen a small boy who seemed 
to be strung together with wires, whose feet 
could never slow down to a walk but were ever 
skipping over the ground at a dance or a run? 
Well, there is such a boy at the Institute, and 



Ill 1 








Mexican Boy, Gardena, California 



STORIES FROM GARDENA 109 

we will call him Pedro. He is a slender little 
fellow about nine years old. 

Shall I let Pedro tell the story as he told it 
to me? Of course, you will miss the best part 
of all; because you cannot see the everchanging 
expression of his big brown eyes — the most 
intensely honest-looking eyes one could imagine. 

"The first thing I remember I live with my 
papa and my mamma. They was good to me and 
my little brother and my sister. Then my 
sister got sick and they took us boys away to 
keep us from catching it. My sister she died. 
Then my mamma got sick and she had a big hole 
in her side — right here — and she had lots of 
fever. One day they took her to the hospital, 
and then my papa took me and my little 
brother to my aunt's house, and she was good to 
us 'cause she was the nice one. 

"After three months my papa come and told 
us my mamma was dead, but I didn't believe 
him. He took us to a house and held our 
hands and we went in and there was my mamma 
all still in a pretty box. We cried lots, my 
little brother and me, and my papa cried some 
too. A lady told us not to cry, but we didn't 
mind her, 'cause we had to cry. Then they 
took my mamma to a church and a preacher 



110 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

talked. After that we all went in a carriage to 
a place where there was a big hole, and the men 
put the pretty box down in the ground and 
dropped leaves and flowers on it to keep the 
dirt from spoiling it. 

"After that, my papa he took us to our other 
aunt's house, and me and my little brother 
cried all the time, 'cause we wanted our mamma. 
You know our mamma used to love us before she 
got sick. My papa said he couldn't keep us 
'cause he had to give all his money to pay for 
the pretty box. 

"My aunt — she had three babies and she 
wanted me and my little brother to take care of 
them all the time, and we didn't want to. She 
was awful mean to us and whipped us all the 
time. We told my papa when he came to see us 
that we didn't want to stay there, but he said 
we had to 'cause there wasn't any other place. 
So we stayed. At night we had to sleep on the 
floor with just a sheet on the boards, and oh — 
it was awful cold ! We was dirty too, 'cause she 
wouldn't give us any water to take a bath for 
a long time, and I got lots and lots of sores on 
my legs. 

"You know my aunt she had some bad, mean 
boys — and they'd eat their beans and tortillas 



STORIES FROM GARDENA 111 

and leave a little on their plates and make me 
and my little brother eat it and it made us sick 
'cause they were so dirty. 

"Then my papa died 'cause his heart was sad 
about my mamma. So I ran away and hid in a 
barn in some hay and I was a long time without 
anything to eat. I had two matches, and I 
lighted them and threw them in the hay — then 
I ran away when the smoke got big. And some 
boys said I did it and then I ran awful fast 
and jumped into a car and hid. The train 
started and I hid till it stopped, and then I got 
out and a Mexican took me to his home and 
gave me something to eat. 

"You know — when I was out on the street 
I saw two boys from that town where my aunt 
lives and they told her about me; so she came 
and got me and took me back. But I didn't 
want to stay, so I ran away again. Then my 
aunt made me stay from school 'cause she was 
afraid I would get away again. One day the 
teacher come to see why I didn't go to school, 
and after that there come a sort of a policeman, 
and he took me away from my aunt to the 
Detention Home. 

"One day Mr. Howe come and ask me what 
I want to be when I get big, and I tell him 'a 



112 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

painter/ And he said I'd been eating too much 
beans. So the judge said I could come here. 
You don't 'spose he'll take me away again, will 
he? I wouldn't go for nothing in the world! I 
wish he'd bring my little brother here too! he'd 
like it fine." 

Now, may I tell you a little of what has hap- 
pened to Pedro since he came to the Institute? 
Indeed he had been eating too many beans. 
He seemed to think we were having a celebration 
of some kind when he ate his first plain but 
wholesome meal. For the next few days he 
ate so much and with such rapidity, in spite 
of the remonstrances of the teacher at his table, 
trying to store up for the "lean days" he felt sure 
would come soon, that he developed a severe 
case of indigestion. He confided to one of the 
teachers that when he came the boys told him 
they had all they wanted to eat and had lots 
of fun too. He informed them that he did not 
believe them. But he added that the next 
day he did believe them. 

His progress in school has been steady and 
sure. So trustworthy is he that the teacher 
sometimes permits him to have a class of smaller 
boys outside of school hours. The dignity of 
his professorship rests heavily upon him. One 



STORIES FROM GARDENA 113 

day the teacher was writing on the blackboard 
and Pedro was at her side spelling out the words 
as she wrote, "The world belongs to the — " 
"United States!" shouted Pedro, and great was 
his disappointment when she added "energetic 
and the wise." 

Best of all, the heart of the lad has been 
learning of the Great Teacher. Over and over 
he has said, "Why, I didn't know nothing about 
God when I came here, but now I do." And 
he surely does. 

At Christmas time most of the boys went 
home for vacation. Pedro said that he would 
like to go back to the Detention Home to see 
the boys if we were sure that they wouldn't 
make him stay. He was allowed to spend two 
or three days there and when he came home he 
said, "I told the boys about God and the Bible, 
but some of them are there because they are 
bad boys and they laughed at me. But maybe 
they will remember what I said." One day on 
the street car Pedro sat by a man who was 
smoking. He seemed troubled for a few 
moments and finally looked up into the man's 
face and said, "I know something that ain't 
good for your heart and your brain." 

The man asked, "What is it, my boy?" 



114 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

"Smoking!" answered Pedro. 

The man asked where he learned such things 
and quick as a flash came the answer, "In the 
school where I live." 

Not many days ago he was sent to town 
on an errand, and on the way he fell in with a 
Japanese. Pedro inquired if he were a Christian 
and if he read the Bible and was much troubled 
when the man answered in the negative. Noth- 
ing daunted, Pedro told him to get a Bible and 
look up a certain verse and tell him what he 
thought of it the next time they met. 

Out of the abundance of his heart Pedro 
speaks, and is "instant in season and out of 
season," because he wants others to learn about 
God as he has learned about him at the Insti- 
tute. Can you estimate the good Pedro will 
do among his people after spending several years 
at the Institute, adding knowledge to the zeal 
which he so richly possesses? 



CHAPTER XIII 

GETTING CLOSE TO REAL LIFE 

No one but those who do the actual work 
can fully understand the needs met and the 
varied ministry rendered by such an institution 
as the Plaza Community Center in Los Angeles 
which is serving so generously the large Mexi- 
can population in that part of the city. We 
cannot all share directly in the work, but the 
following stories told in the words of Miss 
Katherine B. Higgins, one of the workers, will 
at least give us a glimpse of the sort of situations 
to which the welfare department ministers. 

A Telephone Message 
Just after reaching the office one morning the 
telephone rang, and upon answering, I heard 
an official at the County Hospital say: "We 
are sending out from the hospital a little 
Mexican mother, about eighteen years of age, 
and her baby, two weeks old, and we would 
like to put her in your care. This mother's 
husband was killed in Mexico by the Indians, 
and she was compelled to leave Mexico without 
even her trunk, and with but a few dollars in 

115 



116 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

her purse. The little girl, Virginia, was born 
on the train. The smoking compartment was 
turned into a hospital, and the ladies in the 
Pullman took some of the sheets from the bed 
and made clothing for this little Mexican baby. 
Upon arriving in Los Angeles she was brought 
to the hospital. We would appreciate it very 
much if you would take this little mother and 
baby in your care, and, when she is able, secure 
employment for her, that she may support 
herself and baby. She has no friends here; 
all her nearest relatives are in Mexico.' ' 

We immediately visited her and found her 
very anxious to begin work at once. However, 
she was not strong enough to go to work, and 
so we advised her to go to the clinic for medical 
attention, promising her employment mending 
clothes in our Goodwill Industries at the Plaza 
Community Center. One of the doctors at the 
clinic told his wife and mother about this little 
woman, and they became very much interested 
in her. When they found that, at our insti- 
tution at the Plaza, we were providing work 
for the unemployed and those who never had 
a chance, and that we were interested in helping 
them to a higher plane of life, they also became 
interested in our institution. The baby entered 



GETTING CLOSE TO LIFE 117 

our Day Nursery, and its mother headed the 
list as the first employee at the Goodwill 
Industries, where she is learning what real 
Christianity is. 

At the Police Court 

"Can you come over to the Police Court at 
once?" was another message recently heard over 
the wires. When we had arrived at the Police 
Department, the officer said: "We have a man 
who has been mistreating his wife and children, 
and who does not provide for them. He is now 
in jail, and when released is not capable of 
handling his wages. Will you kindly arrange 
to receive his money and see that the family is 
provided for?" 

Upon promising to investigate the case and 
do what we could, we went to the "home." 
It would be impossible to tell you the conditions 
that we found there. Sufficient to say, there 
were four walls, hardly enough furniture to be 
seen, and a garbage can filled with garbage in 
the room. On a bed in the corner was a child 
who looked to be a few months old — (we after- 
ward learned it was nine) — struggling against 
death. We felt sure that it could last but a few 
hours, and asked God to take it home. Early 



118 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

the next morning, a message called us again to 
the Police Court where we learned that the 
child had died. We went to the home at 
once, and as best we could, comforted the little 
mother, who, with her other four children, was 
broken-hearted over the loss of the child. As 
the people were very poor, and had barely 
enough money left from the husband's wages 
to pay the undertaker, they had no money to 
pay the priest to officiate at the funeral, and we 
learned that, as is almost always the case, he 
would not go without pay. 

Ylidia 

"Where did you get it?" exclaimed the doctor, 
as the welfare worker carried little Ylidia into 
the clinic one morning and asked for an opinion. 

An examination of the emaciated little body 
brought the quick diagnosis of "malnutrition," 
and an emphatic prescription of "decent food 
and care." 

Yes, it was quite evident what she needed; 
but where was she to get it? In the dark, 
dirty, un ventilated room from which she had 
been brought, and where she and brother Pedro 
spent their days while mother was out working? 

Only one available institution could provide 



GETTING CLOSE TO LIFE 119 

the care, the attention, and the nutritious food 
that this frail bit of humanity needed. 

That was the Plaza Community Center. 

So it was arranged that the Welfare Depart- 
ment should minister daily to the needs of 
Ylidia, whose soiled clothing, matted hair, and 
grimy face and hands accentuated her starving 
appearance on the day she made her first visit. 

Pedro brought her early each morning, and 
together they played in the patio all day. 
Plenty of milk and good food, and baths and 
clean clothing, brought about a wonderful 
transformation. At the end of three weeks 
Ylidia could smile, and the little limbs were 
even then beginning to round out. 

Mother called for them after her work each 
day, and taking courage, readily responded to 
offers of assistance in cleaning the room which 
she and the children called home, and ridding 
it of the "animalitos" which inhabited the 
crevices in the whitewashed walls. 

"No Gods In There" 

Pedro, playing in the patio at the Plaza 
Community Center, was invited to come to 
Sunday school the following Sabbath. 

"Where?" he asked. 



120 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

"Right here in the church," teacher answered, 
indicating the side door of the little green 
building. 

"That ain't a church," he said, derisively. 

"What makes you think it isn't a church?" 

"O, I saw it, and there ain't no gods in there. 
There's nothing but flags." 

"The Open Door" 

Holidays are rarely known by some of the 
folks at the Plaza Community Center. How- 
ever, Decoration Day was declared a holiday; 
but, owing to the rush of work, one of the 
workers thought that she would take advantage 
of the opportunity to work quietly behind 
closed doors. 

Very soon after her arrival there was a knock 
at the door. Her resolution not to open the 
door was quickly broken, when on peering out, 
she saw a Mexican, with an anxious look on her 
face, awaiting a reply. 

"Do you help folks here?" was asked when the 
door was opened. Receiving an affirmative 
answer, she poured out her story. 

"I am a stranger here, no friends and nowhere 
to go. I must have work to-day. I met some 
Mexican women over there," pointing to the 



GETTING CLOSE TO LIFE 121 

Plaza, "and they told me that the people in 
this little house would help me to find work. 
The American people who brought me here 
to work in a hotel went away at night and left 
me without any money. " 

When asked where she stayed the night 
before, she said: "I don't like to tell you. 
When it was getting dark I had no money and 
no place to go. I asked a man on the street for 
fifty cents. He gave it to me, and I got some- 
thing to eat and a bed." 



CHAPTER XIV 
AN INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY 

To those who were following the newspapers 
and magazines a few years ago (1905-1907) the 
name of the Imperial Valley is indeed familiar. 
It was as a result of the attempt to irrigate 
this valley that the Colorado River got away 
from those who sought to control it and for 
nearly two years poured its waters in a torrent 
into the valley, forming the now famous Salton 
Sea. The story of the heroic fight with this 
unruly river and the final victory over it by 
Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific Rail- 
road will long be told. So important did the 
matter become that President Roosevelt 
addressed Congress upon the subject, but 
Congress moved slowly and it was left for 
private enterprise, encouraged by President 
Roosevelt, to complete the conquest. 

The reader is thrilled as he pictures to him- 
self the line of new steel cars loaded with rock 
which were dumped into the torrent in an 
effort to close the break. But to the dweller in 
the valley it meant that the entire cost must 

ultimately be charged back to the land. In 

122 



AN INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY 123 

spite of this early catastrophe, however, the 
Imperial Valley has become one of the most 
productive parts of the earth's surface. In the 
year 1918 the assessed valuation of the irri- 
gated land in the region was approximately 
$36,000,000. During the same year the value 
of the farm products raised was $50,000,000. 
Fruit, cotton, alfalfa, melons, and many other 
crops grow in abundance. Brawley, in the 
center of the valley, is the second shipping 
station on the Southern Pacific in all the South- 
land. During the busy season it is said that 
three hundred carloads of the finest cantaloupes 
and other melons are shipped from the valley 
each day. 

This remarkable agricultural development 
very naturally has brought in many settlers and 
of many sorts. Americans, Mexicans, Hindus, 
Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, and other racial 
groups are to be found. Prosperous towns have 
sprung up and churches have been built, but, 
in general, the churches have lagged behind the 
other developments. The church buildings are 
inadequate and Sunday school classes are forced 
to meet in various places, including the parson- 
age and the school house. 

One of the most important centers in the 



124 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

entire valley is formed by Calexico and Mexicali, 
two towns on opposite sides of the Mexican 
border. (For we must remember that the 
valley extends down into Lower California, that 
some of the finest land is on the Mexican side, 
and that even the water which irrigates the 
valley flows first down into Mexico and then 
comes northward again to water the land in 
the United States.) 

The two towns, Calexico in the United States, 
and Mexicali in Mexico, have at present a 
population of more than sixteen thousand, 
six thousand living in Calexico and ten thousand 
across the border in Mexicali. In Calexico 
there are approximately four thousand Anglo- 
Saxons, with something over two thousand 
Mexicans and several hundred of the black and 
yellow races. In Mexicali, which incidentally 
is the capital of Lower California, there are some 
five thousand Mexicans, four thousand Chinese 
and Japanese, and about one thousand of other 
nationalities. (Lower California is included with 
California in the Latin American Home Mission 
Field of the Methodist Episcopal Church.) 

These two communities are the center of this 
very important agricultural region, which 
stretches both above and below the border. 



AN INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY 125 

One of the chief products of the immediate 
region is a very fine grade of cotton. Here are 
located large cotton gins, and the cotton is 
brought in in huge wagons from long distances. 
The governor of Lower California has discovered 
that the Chinese make much better cotton 
producers than do the Mexicans, and for this 
reason he has granted many concessions to the 
Chinese. A large Chinese influx has been the 
result. There is naturally a large import and 
export trade at this point between Mexico and 
the United States. In 1919 this totaled $16,- 
200,731. 

In the year 1910 there were only seven 
hundred and ninety-three people listed in 
Calexico and only six hundred and fifty in 
Mexicali. The very rapid growth in the decade 
since that time has produced certain situations 
which are a very direct challenge to the church. 
For example, in the case of Mexicali, while 
business interests have been rapidly developing 
and while the population has been increasing 
by leaps and bounds, the church has done 
almost nothing. 1 This city of ten thousand 

1 Since the above paragraph was written the Centenary 
has made possible the opening of a mission for Mexicans in 
Calexico and Mexicali. 



126 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

population is almost destitute of religious minis- 
trations, yet a recent count showed ten pool- 
rooms, twenty-one barrooms, two Chinese 
gambling houses with lotteries, one bull ring 
and a theater, gambling house, bar, and house 
of prostitution combined. This institution 
occupies half a block right in the center of the 
town. It is said that the total overhead 
expense of this one institution is not less than 
forty thousand dollars per month. Here vice 
reigns supreme in its most open and flagrant 
forms, and it cannot help but have a very 
harmful effect, not only upon the residents of 
Mexicali, but also upon the young life of Calex- 
ico. 

In Calexico there are three churches with 
resident pastors — the Methodist Episcopal, 
the Congregational, and the Baptist. Of these 
three the Methodist Episcopal Church has 
perhaps the best church property, pays the 
largest salary and has the largest church 
membership and the largest Sunday school. 
In spite of this fact, however, the present 
church building is nothing but a cheap wooden 
structure totally inadequate to meet the needs 
of the congregation. When a Sunday school 
class, or some other organization in the church, 





Just over the line in Lower California. A Methodist home 
missionary is just opening a Sunday school for them 



AN INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY 127 

desires to hold a social gathering it is necessary 
to take the pews out of the small auditorium, 
or to pile them in a corner of the room. The 
church is not equipped for a satisfactory pro- 
gram of religious education, and in many ways 
it finds itself poorly adapted to meet the needs 
of the community. 

Thus we have here two great communities 
comprising thousands of Americans, thousands 
of Chinese, and thousands of Mexicans with 
absolutely inadequate religious facilities, or, in 
the case of Mexicali, with none at all. It is not 
surprising that such a situation as this has been 
brought forcibly to the attention of the Cen- 
tenary, and that very definite plans have 
already been made for a forward movement in 
this region. Lots have been secured in a very 
desirable part of the city of Calexico — just 
next to the civic center — and there is to be 
erected in this vicinity a fine church for the 
English-speaking congregation in Calexico, and 
a block away another comfortable and ade- 
quate building in which the Mexican work can 
be carried on. It is expected that from this 
center work will be projected across the border 
into Mexicali, and the experience of other 
workers at other points on the border, especially 



128 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

at Douglas, Arizona, shows how feasible this 
plan is. 

It is doubtful whether there could be dis- 
covered anywhere in the Southwest a mission 
field of greater need in proportion to the size of 
the population, or a more strategic center for 
doing a piece of work, the influence of which 
will radiate not only all through California, but 
over into Old Mexico and across the ocean to 
China and Japan. Blue prints are drawn for 
the buildings and the plans are only waiting 
the word of command to move forward. 

Just how closely related the moral problems 
on one side of the border are to those on the 
opposite side is well illustrated in the case of the 
liquor traffic. No sooner were the last rites 
said over John Barleycorn in the United States 
than plans were laid for carrying on the nefa- 
rious business just across the line. A large 
brewery is being constructed one block from 
the United States border in Mexicali. This is 
financed and will be operated by American 
citizens living in Calexico. The relative ease 
with which smuggling across the border is 
carried on makes this not only a direct menace 
to the residents of Mexicali, but also tends to 
nullify the effectiveness of the amendment 



AN INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY 129 

recently added to the Constitution of the 
United States. 

The following is a paragraph quoted from 
an exclusive newspaper dispatch dated, Calex- 
ico, January 16, 1920: 

"National prohibition became effective in 
Calexico with customs inspectors endeavoring 
to hurriedly inspect and pass carload after 
carload of liquor which has been shipped with 
all possible haste to the border, consigned to 
Mexicali. Across the line the glasses clinked 
merrily and will continue to do so." 

Members of Methodist Episcopal Sunday 
schools should indeed count it a privilege to 
have a part in a home mission program which 
includes the meeting of some at least of the 
pressing moral and religious needs which exist 
in this immensely important international 
gateway. 



CHAPTER XV 
A WORK WORTH WHILE 

When you visit San Francisco you will do 
well to inquire for 1359 Pine Street, and some 
time during the day or evening make a visit 
to this interesting spot. It is here that the 
Pine Street Japanese Methodist Episcopal 
Church is located, and also the Anglo-Japanese 
School, of which Dr. Milton S. Vail is president. 
The advertisement of the school indicates that 
it provides a "thorough training in English and 
Japanese, including partial high school course." 
It further reveals the fact that there are "eight 
instructors, American and Japanese," and that 
"emphasis is placed upon moral and religious 
instruction." If you measure these statements 
and then multiply them by forty, the age of the 
school, you will get some idea of the significance 
of this important institute, which is in such a 
real sense the center of the work of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church for Japanese in the 
United States. 

During the forenoon you might find Japanese 
young men sitting quietly in various rooms in 

130 



A WORK WORTH WHILE 131 

the building studying very important looking 
textbooks. In the evening, however, you will 
find these same young men, with many others, 
sitting under the excellent instruction of Dr. 
Vail and his associates. Alert, eager, and 
ambitious, these Japanese young men and 
young women give the best that is in them to 
the study of those things which will make them 
not only more like Americans, but more than 
that — actual Americans. 

It is sometimes hard for us to understand 
how there can be such a thing as American- 
Japanese or Japanese-Americans, but possibly 
that is due more directly to our stupidity than 
to any real difficulty presented. We have 
American Indians, American Negroes, and 
many other kinds of Americans. Surely, it is 
not too great a stretch of the imagination to 
think of Japanese- Americans. As a matter of 
fact, we do not have to use much imagination, 
for we already have individuals of Japanese 
stock born in the United States, who, whether 
we call them American-Japanese or Japanese- 
Americans, are American citizens with all of 
the rights and all of the loyalties of other 
Americans. The Japanese, of proper age, born 
in the United States, entered the war; and other 



132 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Japanese residents, born in Japan, volunteered 
for service in the American Army. These 
young men delighted, and still delight, in 
calling themselves "one hundred per cent 
American." 

This is distinctly in line with the traditional 
Japanese principle, that any Japanese moving 
to a new section or to a new country should be 
loyal to the land of his adoption. There is 
real danger to-day, however, that thoughtless 
and unjust treatment of the Japanese in the 
United States will bring about a reversal of this 
policy. In the early history of Japan, when 
the provinces were largely independent, it 
frequently happened that a Japanese would 
transfer his residence from one province to 
another. It also happened that disputes arose 
between provinces, and in all such cases the 
Japanese were taught to remain loyal to the 
adopted country and to uphold its honor. It 
is said that when Japanese come to this country 
they are enjoined to conduct their lives in full 
accord with the laws and spirit of the country 
in which they live. Dr. Herbert B. Johnson, 
superintendent of the Pacific Japanese Mission 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, tells of two 
young men both trained in Methodist Japanese 



A WORK WORTH WHILE 133 

Sunday schools in this country, who enlisted 
in the American Army. One of these young 
men was about to depart for camp when he 
received a letter from the other Japanese- 
American native son who was already in camp. 
The letter contained the following: 

"I know you will live straight and be a true 
and loyal soldier of democracy. Don't for a 
moment think that the army is full of immoral 
or degraded fellows. No, not by a long shot. 
They are few, or rather in the minority. But 
my advice to you is to keep your book of life a 
clean sheet. Use pure English and avoid and 
abstain from language unbecoming a true 
American. It is only in that way, by your 
actions and daily life, that you can prove to the 
American people the true worth of Japanese 
blood in an American community. You are 
one of the few chosen ones, and upon you and 
me rests a great responsibility. You are the 
link of friendship and the bond which will tie 
the East and West. All I can ask of you is to do 
your level best and be worthy of the people who 
bid you Godspeed and await the news of your 
progress, and last — the most important of all — 
be true, be loyal, be faithful to the land of 
lands, 'My own United States!' " 



134 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

There may be, and doubtless are, good and 
sufficient reasons for refusing to allow unlimited 
Oriental immigration into the United States, 
but there are no good and sufficient reasons for 
failing to treat with Christian spirit those 
Japanese who have already found a home in 
our country, and who have demonstrated not 
only their willingness but their ability to under- 
stand and uphold the honor of American 
institutions. Surely, we ought at least to give 
them a chance. A recent writer has said, "The 
Japanese are undoubtedly becoming the most 
intelligent of all of our alien groups. They 
actually eat up all American literature and 
education within their reach. Some of the 
very best book stores on the Coast are owned 
by Japanese and filled with works compiled 
in the Japanese language." The only danger- 
ous Japanese, just as the only dangerous native 
son, is one who, because of ignorance, or be- 
cause of lack of Christian purpose, is not fitted 
to take his place in the common social group. 
It is for us to make certain that the opportu- 
nities for education and for Christian develop- 
ment are such that the boys and girls and the 
young men and women already in this country 
of- Japanese parentage shall have a fair chance 




Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church, Oakland, California 



A WORK WORTH WHILE 135 

at the good things of life. In 1915, 3,342 
children of Japanese parents were born in this 
country. The census will tell us just how many 
Japanese there are in the United States. In 
the meantime a fair estimate is perhaps 140,000. 
This is not a large number to be sure, yet in 
many respects it represents an important 
element. This is true not only because of the 
great international question involved, but also 
for other reasons. 

We are told that if the Japanese were sud- 
denly ousted from California, that fair State 
would be deprived of 90 per cent of her straw- 
berries and cantaloupes; 80 per cent of her 
onions, asparagus, tomatoes, celery, lettuce and 
cut flowers; 55 per cent of her cabbage and 
seeds; 40 per cent of her potatoes; 20 per cent 
of her beans; and 10 per cent of her grapes, 
fruits, and rice. On the same basis Oregon 
would be without half of her Hood River 
Apples, and Colorado would lose 85 per cent of 
her Rocky Ford melons. 

Fortunately, however, in spite of anti-Japa- 
nese agitation, we are not thinking of deporting 
either our American citizens of Japanese extrac- 
tion, or our Japanese friends to whom we 
refuse citizenship. Instead we face the much 



136 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

more interesting and promising opportunity of 
helping them to live with us as we with them — 
on terms of mutual helpfulness and Christian 
friendship. This is the task of the church, and 
with it definite progress is being made. 

In 1916 there were listed 78 churches or 
missions among the Japanese in the United 
States. Of these 23 are Methodist Episcopal 
institutions, of which 16 are regularly organized 
churches in California. A considerable staff of 
workers has been assembled; most of these are 
regular Conference members, 90 per cent of 
whom are graduates of theological schools 
either in this country or in Japan. These men 
have been in the service of the church for 
varying periods up to twenty years, and their 
faithfulness and Christian character have been 
thoroughly demonstrated. 

There are now more than 40 Japanese 
missions west of the Mississippi River, and 
one half of these belong to the Methodist 
Episcopal Church; the others are largely Pres- 
byterian and Congregationalist. There is a 
fine spirit of cooperation among the workers. 
During the past year every one of the Methodist 
Japanese churches, with one exception, raised 
its entire benevolence quota in full. This 



A WORK WORTH WHILE 137 

included, of course, the Centenary apportion- 
ment. Quite apart from the raising of this 
money several Japanese congregations went 
ahead with the purchase of valuable lots for the 
erection of new church buildings, and also 
raised money for the buildings. They do not 
ask to be relieved of their Centenary quota in 
order to do this for themselves, but they are 
apparently glad to do both things. Some of 
the Japanese churches are most carefully 
planned and are unusually attractive and well 
adapted to the needs of the communities which 
they serve. 

It seems to be characteristic of the Japanese 
to scatter out in our big cities rather than to 
colonize in particular sections as do the Chinese. 
The location of Japanese churches in cities is, 
therefore, often chosen with reference to con- 
venient lines of transportation, as the Japanese 
must come in to some common center in order 
to share in the services. This is quite distinctly 
in contrast to the situation which we find in 
our Chinatowns in numerous large cities. 

We must remember, however, that most of 
the Japanese when they come to this country 
are Buddhists, and they must, therefore, be won 
to Christianity, if Christianity is to affect their 



138 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

lives. Already there are practically as many 
Buddhist temples in the United States as there 
are Japanese Christian churches, and this 
presents a real challenge to the church. The 
wonder is not that there are so many Buddhists, 
but, rather, that there are so many Christians 
when so many difficulties have been placed in 
their way. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church is fortu- 
nate in having such a man as Dr. Johnson in 
charge of its Japanese work on the Pacific Coast. 
For seventeen years he was a missionary in 
Japan, and now for fifteen years he has had 
charge of the Japanese work on the coast. 
His long experience and intimate association 
with the Japanese provide just the background 
needed for the work. 

At the time of the earthquake and fire in San 
Francisco, Dr. Johnson, living in Berkeley, was 
unable to get across the river. Native Japanese 
Christians in San Francisco, at the risk of life, 
entered the church, took some of the most 
valuable records, a picture of Bishop Harris, 
and the pulpit Bible, and carried them out in 
the back yard and buried them in the ground. 
After the fire was over these valuable records 
were found uninjured. This is only one inci- 



A WORK WORTH WHILE 139 

dent revealing the loyalty of these Japanese 
Christians to the work and their devotion to 
their friends and leaders. On special occasions 
this church is filled to overflowing with its 
Japanese congregations. 

As we come to know and appreciate these 
fine Japanese people who have found their 
homes among us, and as we talk with men like 
Dr. Johnson and others who have spent years 
in working with and for them, we become 
convinced that the solution of the Japanese 
problem in the United States is not inflamma- 
tory articles in newspapers and rampant anti- 
Japanese propaganda from the platform, but, 
rather, the application of Christianity in its 
broadest terms, with all that it implies of 
brotherhood, cooperation, and justice; and we 
are sometimes inclined to believe that if we are 
ever to live together as we ought to live, this 
application must be as generous among our 
native-born sons as among our more recently 
arrived Japanese friends. The great facts of 
life are not shades of complexion and features 
of countenance, but, rather, spiritual facts, 
and the community of ideals which we seek in 
this country may be worked out with people of 
varying shades of color, provided we have the 



140 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

willingness and the determination to meet 
every well-intentioned individual half way, 
and give each, regardless of his antecedents, an 
opportunity to live and to serve under condi- 
tions befitting a child of the living God. It is 
with this aim in view that the Centenary is 
strengthening the already fine work for Japa- 
nese which had its beginnings in Dr. Vail's 
school some forty years ago. 



CHAPTER XVI 
ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION 

The earliest explorers and settlers in America 
began the work of preaching the gospel to the 
American Indian and they found him receptive 
to the Christian message. To-day, however, 
after centuries have passed there still remain 
perhaps forty thousand of unevangelized 
Indians. This situation is not due to the fact 
that Indians are less responsive to Christianity 
than other peoples among whom missionary 
work has been done (although sometimes the 
selfish acts of white men toward the Indian have 
spoken louder than their words), but, rather, 
to the fact that the task has not been definitely 
faced in its entirety. We have done much 
talking about the needs of the Indian, but we 
have often lacked an earnest and intelligent 
approach to the real task. 

According to the 1910 census, there were 
living representatives of 280 Indian tribes in 
the United States proper, while in Alaska 21 
other tribes were found, with 45 additional 
Eskimo tribes. Probably 100 tribes of Indians 

141 



142 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

have become extinct since the discovery of 
America. Sometimes this has been due to the 
amalgamation of tribes rather than to the 
actual extinction of the tribal line. While 
there are little data at hand on which the actual 
number of Indians in the United States in 1492 
can be accurately determined, it is estimated 
by James Mooney, a United States government 
expert, that the number reached more than 
1,000,000. There are at present about 330,000 
Indians in the United States. Intermarriage 
between whites and Indians has been common 
and still continues. In 1910 thirty-three per 
cent of the total number of Indians was of 
mixed white descent. In many cases, however, 
entire groups of Indians are unclaimed by any 
church. 

In adjusting himself to the ways of civilization 
the Indian has not always found his path an 
easy one. Tuberculosis has carried off many 
Indians, and other diseases have been fostered 
by their crude attempts to change their methods 
of life. As the years have passed, however, the 
Indian has learned many things, and now he 
adapts himself to the white man's way of 
living with relative ease, and many of the 
younger Indians have demonstrated their ability 



ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION 14S 

to move forward rapidly when they have once 
set themselves to tasks which fit in with modern 
life and practice. During 1917 the Indians 
purchased $4,500,000 worth of Liberty bonds 
and thousands of Indian young men went vol- 
untarily into the national service. 

More than one third of the Indians to be 
found in the United States live in Oklahoma. 
Arizona, South Dakota, New Mexico, Cali- 
fornia, and Minnesota also have many Indians, 
and they are scattered throughout other States, 
both in the West and the East. 

The method of the government in dealing 
with the Indians has probably not always been 
wise. Conditions have been created which 
made it possible for the Indian to live with 
little or no work, and he has been left to do as 
he desired. Now, however, he is being taught 
how to raise crops properly, and in some cases 
he is required to till his own plot of ground. 
Some of the Indians work as section hands on 
the railroad, some make trinkets, others herd 
cattle or sheep and engage in many other occu- 
pations. 

The organized missionary activities of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church grew out of the 
work of John Stewart among the Wyandotte 



144 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Indians; and Jason Lee, one of the most famous 
home missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, was a missionary to the Indians. At 
present the church is at work among nineteen 
tribes, but the property equipment is poor, and 
the helpers are too few. Already, however, a 
new day is beginning to dawn. Fields are 
being surveyed, special Indian workers assigned, 
and better equipment will be forthcoming as the 
work of the Centenary progresses. 

Perhaps the story of a single field will help us 
to understand something of the complex situa- 
tion which is to be found on many of our Indian 
reservations which are now being opened up 
for white settlers. 

The town of Toppenish is located in the 
Yakima Indian Reservation in the State of 
Washington. For many years the Methodist 
Episcopal Church has been at work in this field, 
but here, as in many other places on the frontier, 
it has not in the past had the courage or the 
resources to face its total task. Some years 
ago there was erected here a small wooden 
church building. Later, a hole was dug under 
this building and the hole was christened a 
"basement." Owing to the fact that this 
region is in the midst of an Indian reservation 




\ 



«■*£ 




The public school in this community was started years ago in 
this church. There are now several school buildings represent- 
ing large investments, but the inadequate church building remains 
unaltered. 



ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION 145 

it was impossible for a long time to get money 
for the erection of a public school building. 
The first school in the community was, there- 
fore, organized and conducted in the Methodist 
Episcopal church. As the years have passed 
more and more of the Indian land has been 
opened up and sold to white settlers. The 
land which is still held by the Indians is largely 
rented, so that the number of white settlers has 
steadily increased, and the town of Toppenish 
has grown until it has a population of three 
thousand. To-day there are an accredited high 
school and two good grade-school buildings, 
representing an investment of many thousands 
of dollars, and the citizens have recently voted 
bonds for a new high school building to cost 
one hundred thousand dollars. In the mean- 
time the church is using the same little building 
in which it began its work and in which the pub- 
lic school was organized. Not long ago, during 
the winter season, the basement was flooded, 
and, as this put the furnace out of commission, 
the building was entirely useless for some weeks. 
Within the immediate vicinity of Toppenish 
reside some one thousand Indians who are 
almost entirely uncared for religiously. They 
are in all stages of civilization, varying from 



146 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

the long-haired blanket Indian to the well- 
educated and cultured, although those in the 
latter class are very few indeed. The govern- 
ment maintains a school for Indian children at 
Fort Simcoe, thirty miles west of Toppenish, 
where Indian girls and boys may be educated 
as far as the fourth grade, but as no compulsory 
education law is enforced, relatively few of the 
children attend this school, and it is very rare 
indeed that any of them attend the public 
school. The Methodist Episcopal Church has 
a mission among the Indians on this reservation 
— some twenty miles due west of Toppenish — 
but the distance is so great that this work does 
not affect the Indians around Toppenish. It 
is a double tragedy that these Indians are so 
seriously neglected by the church, since there 
are indications that their ancestors did have 
direct relations with the early missionaries who 
sacrificed so much to carry the gospel to them. 
Only recently a visitor to the community 
picked up a local newspaper and discovered 
that one of a group of Indians just arrested for 
drunkenness was named Jason Lee. Other 
Indians by the name of Wesley are common. 
Their adoption of Methodist names indicates a 
previous connection with Methodist Episcopal 



ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION 147 

missionaries, although they seem to know 
little of the religion for which the church stands. 

The physical needs among the Indians are 
outstanding. The government estimates that 
of the three thousand Indians on the entire 
reservation, more than eleven hundred are 
suffering from tuberculosis and five hundred 
from trachoma. Practically one half of the 
deaths recorded in a recent year were from 
tuberculosis. The number of deaths and the 
number of births among them seem to be about 
equal, so that they are just about maintaining 
their numbers. 

The situation in Toppenish is further com- 
plicated by the fact that the Mormons have 
selected this wonderful fertile valley for the 
erection of a sugar refinery. Millions of bushels 
of sugar beets are grown here and a new sugar 
factory representing an investment of a million 
dollars has been completed and is in operation. 
This, of course, means that Mormons are 
moving into the valley. Although the prime 
motive back of the move is economic rather than 
religious, a Mormon Sunday school is being 
conducted and services are held. 

There are also a considerable number of 
Japanese who have moved into Toppenish and 



148 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

the immediate vicinity and they are largely 
uncared for religiously and socially, although 
there are one hundred and twenty-five of them 
who have expressed a desire to learn English. 

It is little wonder that the pastor here in 
Toppenish is overwhelmed by the variety of 
needs which present themselves to him. Fortu- 
nately, this is one of the fields which is to receive 
help from the Centenary. A new building 
is to be made possible, and from it there should 
radiate influences which will touch all of the 
various elements in this unique community. 
It is already proposed that a deaconess be 
secured to begin work among the Indians. 
Such an individual could render a large ministry 
by going into the Indian homes, assisting in 
establishing sanitary conditions, and incident- 
ally gaining the confidence of the Indians, for, 
unfortunate as it may be, the fact remains that 
the Indians have been so thoroughly exploited 
by the white man that they are suspicious of 
him and of his religion. 

This town, and the communities adjoining, 
are destined to have a large and substantial 
growth. Congress has committed itself to an 
irrigation project here involving $1,500,000 and 
this will make available a very large addition 



ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION 149 

to the productive territory already in the valley. 
Sugar beets, alfalfa, wheat, potatoes, and many 
other crops are grown in abundance, and many 
cattle are raised. 

So far as the people in Toppenish and vicinity 
are concerned about religion they are predomi- 
nantly Protestant. A Catholic priest comes 
in from time to time to minister to the Indians, 
although only a small proportion are even 
nominally Catholics. 

Toppenish furnishes a good illustration of a 
field which has so many difficult problems that 
we must take hold of them energetically, or 
else confess defeat, and Christians are not of 
the sort to do the latter. The Centenary is 
going to help the church here with a task for 
which it has long been responsible, but which 
it has done altogether too poorly in the past. 



CHAPTER XVII 

A MODERN MIGRATION AND SOME 
THINGS INVOLVED IN IT 

Migrations did not cease when the children 
of Israel reached the promised land. Instead 
the history of the human race since that time, 
as well as before, might easily be summed up as 
one continuous series of migrations. There is 
always an alluring "promised land 55 inviting 
those who seek larger opportunities in life, and 
the story of the human race consists mainly of 
the account of journeys to some land of promise 
and the things which happened after the 
journeys were completed. 

To tell the entire story of the recent north- 
ward migration of the Negro in the United 
States would be to unfold a panorama of human 
hopes, fears, disappointments, illusions, and 
fulfillments which would fill many volumes. 
The high wages offered by wartime industries 
seems to have been the factor which started the 
northward stream, but many other forces had 
a part in the process. Better educational 
opportunities for the children, larger social 

150 



A MODERN MIGRATION 151 

freedom, and many other advantages, real or 
anticipated, proved so compelling that practi- 
cally one out of every ten Negroes throughout 
all the Southland pulled up stakes and started 
for the North. From every quarter and from 
all walks of life they came; those who had 
money and those who had none; those who 
knew a trade and those who were unskilled; 
those who were educated and those who were 
ignorant. They came by the thousands to 
Chicago, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Detroit, 
Pittsburgh, New York, Newark, and scores of 
other places. They came to communities 
ill-prepared to receive them, and since their 
coming they have been jostled and crowded 
and forced to live in great confusion under the 
most unsatisfactory conditions. Many of the 
anticipated benefits have proved to be illusions, 
and when these colored people have turned to 
the church for comfort they have been told there 
is no room for them. A larger percentage of 
colored people are church members than of any 
other racial group in the United States, yet 
the October (1919) issue of World Outlook tells 
us that in Cleveland, with a Negro population 
of 25,000 and a church membership of 8,000, 
the combined seating capacity of all the colored 



152 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

churches is only 4,000. A Negro minister in 
Philadelphia held revival services in a tent, 
but when the meeting was over he was con- 
fronted with the following dilemma: 10,000 
people wanted to attend his church, but he had 
seats for only 1,000. In the Park Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, of Cincinnati, 
where the colored population has doubled since 
1916, the church and the Sunday school room 
are continually taxed beyond their capacities. 
Detroit, with a colored population said to 
approximate 50,000, has church seating space 
for 18,000. One congregation, which two years 
ago numbered twenty-eight, now fills a theater 
each Sunday for its services. And so the 
instances might be multiplied to demonstrate 
that the Negro who was a church member and 
a church attendant in the South cannot even 
find seating room in the churches of the North. 
Various temporary expedients are being adopted 
to meet this unusual situation. One church 
holds three services each Sunday, others ask 
their members who come to church in the 
morning to stay away in the evening. For 
special meetings theatres are used and out- 
door services are held. Classes meet in homes 
when there is no room in the church. 



A MODERN MIGRATION 153 

Naturally enough, the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension has given 
careful attention to these very pressing needs, 
and the Centenary plans involve substantial 
expenditures for the support and development 
of Negro churches, religious philanthropies, and 
educational enterprises. These items include 
the building of 83 new churches for northern 
Negroes and help in the maintenance of 116 
new workers. The responsibility of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church for the Negro is large, 
for it is a well-known fact that an overwhelming 
percentage of Negro church members are 
either Methodist or Baptist. 

Possibly the story of one church will help 
us to understand something of the possibilities 
of this work. The story is so closely connected 
with the life of a single individual, however, 
that we must know something about him 
before we can thoroughly understand the work. 

The Rev. Charles A. Tindley, one of the most 
effective Negro preachers in America, did not 
have many advantages as a boy. It is said 
that at seventeen he had hardly seen the inside 
of a book or a church. It took him twenty 
years to work his way through school, but he 
did the task and finally received his degree 



154 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

from Bennett College in North Carolina. 
Seventeen years ago he became pastor of the 
East Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church in 
Philadelphia. At that time the church had 
150 members and Dr. Tindley could not col- 
lect enough from them to pay a janitor. Now 
there are 4,700 members and the church is 
crowded to the doors every Sunday. 

The ministry of this church is not limited to 
a preaching service. The Sunday school has an 
enrollment of nearly 4,000, although there is 
room for only 700 in the Sunday school room. 
Nearly 50 different class meetings are held. 
For special services a theater is rented and the 
attendance has been as high as 5,000, with 
1,500 turned away for lack of room. Street 
and doorstep services are held on Sunday; an 
employment bureau is maintained, people in 
dire need are cared for, strangers are met at 
the train, a training school is conducted with 
classes in domestic science, bookkeeping, short- 
hand, typewriting, and millinery. 

The good work has not stopped there, how- 
ever, for Dr. Tindley has cooperated in the 
opening up of suburban communities for 
Negroes so that the intense congestion in 
Philadelphia might be relieved. How needful 



A MODERN MIGRATION 155 

this work is is evidenced by the fact that the 
Board of Health in Philadelphia was moved 
recently to make a special investigation to 
discover the cause of the enormous death rate 
among Negro babies. 

Thus we might continue to enumerate the 
good things which are being done here in East 
Calvary in spite of the fact that the equipment 
with which Dr. Tindley and his associates work 
is most inadequate. It is here that the Cen- 
tenary will make a genuine contribution to the 
work, for a fine new church is to be erected in 
place of the present unsatisfactory building, 
a church planned and equipped to minister to 
the multitudinous needs of this greatly increased 
Negro population. This is one of six enter- 
prises for colored people in Philadelphia which 
are to be strengthened by the members of Meth- 
odist churches and Sunday schools through their 
Centenary gifts to the Board of Home Missions 
and Church Extension, and similar projects 
are to be carried out in other cities. At present 
there are 150 colored Methodist Episcopal 
churches for Negroes in the North. 

The missionary work of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church was begun by a Negro. It 
is both fitting and right, now that the Negro 



156 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

is in special need, that the church should do 
its utmost to minister in such an efficient manner 
that these strangers in a strange land may be 
enabled to take their places in the communi- 
ties to which they have come as self-respecting, 
intelligent, well-conducted Christian citizens. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
HEADQUARTERS FOR GOODWILL 

If you were to start at the city of Boston on 
the Atlantic Coast and travel south and west 
until you came to Los Angeles or San Francisco, 
you might find (that is, if you knew where to 
look) a chain of institutions operated under the 
direction of the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church which would surprise you. A wise man 
once said that "there is nothing new under the 
sun," but, granting that, we can still say that 
the idea of the Goodwill Industries worked out 
by Dr. E. J. Helms, of the Morgan Memorial 
Church in Boston, and now extending from the 
Altantic to the Pacific Ocean, comes as near 
being new as anything can be. 

When Dr. Helms began his work in one of 
the most needy sections of Boston he had few 
theories which he desired to exploit, but he did 
have a keen desire to minister to the needs of the 
people in his parish. He discovered many things 
and he was able to minister in many ways, and 

157 



158 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

while the Goodwill Industries represent only one 
of numerous phases of a large work which grew 
out of the discovery of needs and the attempt 
to minister to them, they have played an 
important part in the remaking of that par- 
ticular section of Boston until from being one 
of the worst sections of the city it has become 
in some respects one of the best. In brief, Dr. 
Helms discovered that many of his people were 
very poor and, therefore, unable to purchase 
the things which they needed. He also dis- 
covered that some of these same people were 
not equipped to hold a good job even if they 
secured one. Because of sickness, physical 
accidents, or other contributing causes, persons 
who could do only a limited amount of work 
found it impossible to secure satisfactory 
employment. Even the employment agency 
run in connection with the church could not 
find places for these people. 

It also occurred to Dr. Helms that in the 
homes of people who were more prosperous 
thousands of dollars' worth of clothing, furni- 
ture, and other household articles were contin- 
ually being cast aside, either to be retained in 
storerooms or to be thrown away. Putting 
these various facts together, there was worked 



HEADQUARTERS FOR GOODWILL 159 

out the plan whereby in the homes of Boston 
"opportunity bags" were placed, and from time 
to time these bags, containing the cast-off 
shoes, clothing, furniture, household equipment, 
and other articles discarded in the homes, 
were collected and brought to the Goodwill 
Industries headquarters. The fumigating, 
cleaning, and repairing of these articles fur- 
nished employment for hundreds and ultimately 
thousands of workers, and when they were put 
into proper shape for use they were sold through 
the Goodwill Industries stores at a nominal 
price to individuals who very much needed 
them and who could not afford to pay the 
higher prices demanded for newer articles. 

Just how this plan works out in connection 
with the Employment Bureau maintained is 
perhaps best described in an account of what 
happened recently at Boston. One morning 
the following note was found on the desk: 

"Please send some one to scrub up the rooms 

of Grandma M., No. 59 Street. She is 

sick and the place is filthy beyond description." 

The first applicant for work that day was a 
woman needing work to earn fuel for her home 
where she had sick children and a rheumatic 
husband who could not go out. The woman 



160 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

gladly offered to scrub the attic home of sick 
Grandma M. if she could get fuel for her sick 
family. 

The second applicant was a man converted 
in the mission the night before. He was ragged 
and filthy and wanted to get out of his whisky 
clothes. His conversion was proved genuine, 
for he jumped at the chance, in return for a 
clean suit, to saw wood and carry coal for the 
sick family of the woman scrubbing the home 
of Grandma M. 

The third applicant was a woman needing 
shoes for her children that they might go to 
school. She was given opportunity to earn 
these shoes by repairing and cleaning the 
clothes needed by the converted drunkard who 
was sawing the wood and toting the coal 
needed by the sick family of the woman who 
was scrubbing up the filthy home of poor, sick 
Grandma M. 

The fourth applicant was a cobbler whose 
own business had run down and who had 
sought everywhere for work and failed. He 
left at home that morning a wife and infant 
three days old and five other little children 
crying for bread. In his despair this Russian- 
Jewish cobbler came to the Morgan Memorial 



HEADQUARTERS FOR GOODWILL 161 

asking for work. At once he was put to work 
in the cobbling department repairing the shoes 
needed by the children of the woman who was 
repairing the garments for the man who was 
providing the fuel needed by the family of the 
woman who was scrubbing up the filthy home 
of sick Grandma M. 

The fifth applicant was a discouraged printer. 
He was the victim of furniture installment or 
loan sharks who had come and taken most all 
his household goods away. He was set to 
work in the printing department printing some 
handbills to advertise the business of the 
Russian cobbler who was helping his own 
family by repairing the shoes for the woman 
who was repairing the clothing for the man 
who was providing the fuel for the family of the 
woman who was scrubbing for Grandma M. 

The sixth applicant for work was a carpenter 
who was able to minister to his need by repairing 
the very furniture needed by the printer who 
printed the handbills for the cobbler who 
helped his own destitute family by repairing 
the shoes needed by the children of the woman 
who repaired the clothing needed by the con- 
verted drunkard who sawed the wood for the 
fire needed by the family of the woman who 



162 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

worked to scrub up the home of sick Grandma 
M. 

In spite of the fact that this sounds like a 
fairy tale it is an accurate picture of what is 
continually taking place at Morgan Memorial. 

The Goodwill Industries, which have devel- 
oped to such remarkable proportions, not only 
furnish physical relief on a self-respecting basis 
to many who need it and teach trades to many 
who are unskilled, but they also build new 
lives and new characters and bring hope and 
cheer and comfort to many who have known 
little sympathy and who, because of unfortu- 
nate circumstances, cannot seem to get a start 
in life. 

The stories of human lives which have been 
remade in one way or another through this 
fine service are too numerous to mention. 
If you go into the headquarters of the Goodwill 
Industries in Denver, you might see there a 
man who looks to be happy, and in this respect 
his looks are not deceiving, and he also appears 
to be well. As a matter of fact, this man had 
tuberculosis and was so weak that he could 
not do ordinary labor. He had come to Colo- 
rado for his health; the Goodwill Industries 
got hold of him and gave him an opportunity 



HEADQUARTERS FOR GOODWILL 163 

to drive a wagon, collecting the opportunity 
bags. The outdoor activity and the light 
work gave the man a chance to earn a living 
and to regain his health at the same time. His 
love for and praise of the Goodwill establish- 
ment is beyond measure. 

If you continue your journey and stop off 
in Los Angeles, you might discover a little 
Mexican woman, with small command of 
English, working away at a sewing machine. 
This woman is earning her living in connection 
with the Goodwill Industries, established for 
the Mexicans in Los Angeles, while her 
daughter, who was formerly stenographer to 
Madero, when he was President of Mexico, is 
studying in the Missionary Training School at 
San Francisco in order to prepare herself as a 
missionary to work among her own people. 
And so the stories might be multiplied wherever 
the work is being started, and this includes 
some fifty cities scattered over the United 
States. 

This idea has not succeeded by mere accident, 
but rather by sheer hard work. It was a 
distinct venture of faith in its beginning, but 
the idea has grown and the work has become so 
successful that most of the Goodwill Industries 



164 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

become self-supporting from the very first, and 
even produce a small revenue. The only cost 
which is chargeable against missionary funds 
is, in most cases, the initial cost of building and 
equipment. In Los Angeles recently there has 
been presented to the Goodwill Industries a 
very large building almost across the street 
from the post office. This is to be the home of 
the Goodwill Industries, which have previously 
been housed in rented and less desirable 
quarters. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have 
recently secured fine locations and many other 
centers are being opened. 

In San Francisco, the Rev. Samuel Quick- 
mire, upon his own responsibility, started a 
Goodwill Industries after spending some time 
in Boston studying Dr. Helms's methods. Mr. 
and Mrs. Quickmire put $1,000 of their own 
money into the enterprise and on that $1,000 
did over $26,000 worth of business the first year, 
over $50,000 the Ficond year, and over $80,000 
the third year. Less than $300 has been given 
to this plant outside of the original gift of the 
founders. Now, however, a new property is 
to be purchased and a Goodwill store opened 
in Oakland. All these centers are carefully 
organized with responsible local committees who 



HEADQUARTERS FOR GOODWILL 165 

work in cooperation with the representatives 
of the Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension. The Centenary is making possible 
the extension of this now thoroughly tested 
method of service. 

It must not be thought, however, that the 
exclusive end of the Goodwill Industries is to 
stop material want; the stories of moral and 
spiritual fruitage are as numerous as those of 
material relief. The spirit which prevails in 
these Goodwill centers is remarkable. The 
workers gather for a devotional service before 
they take up the work of the day, and although 
the attendance at these services is not com- 
pulsory most of the workers are eager to attend. 
Throughout all the activities there is the finest 
spirit of devotion, cooperation, and helpfulness, 
for each one has the joy of knowing that not only 
is he receiving for himself, but he is also con- 
tributing to the happiness and welfare of 
others. Hundreds who are first interested in 
the Goodwill Industries later become regular 
attendants at church and Sunday school. The 
watchword of the Goodwill Industries is "Not 
charity but a chance," and it is indeed a chance 
which thousands of more or less unfortunate 
individuals are finding through this ministry. 



166 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

So effective has the work become that requests 
have already been received to have similar 
centers opened in Mexico City, Buenos Ayres, 
Lima, Peru, and other places. 



CHAPTER XIX 

A LARGE CHURCH AND A LARGE 
PROGRAM IN A LARGE CITY 

If all the people in the parish of the Rev. 
Robert Stephenson, pastor of the Halsted Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, should decide to 
come to church some Sunday morning, forty- 
nine thousand of them would be unable to 
find seats in the church. The boys and girls 
alone in this neighborhood would make a good- 
sized city, yet they live in one small section of 
the great city of Chicago. Few cities have 
played or are destined to play larger parts in 
the history of our country than has Chicago, yet 
the Chicago of the future is to-day very largely 
in the keeping of the seemingly irresponsible 
boys and girls who throng her streets. The 
things which we can do for them will bear large 
fruitage in the days which are to come. 

The history of the religious life of Chicago 
never can be adequately written unless it con- 
tains an account of the work of the Halsted 
Street Institutional Church, located at 1935 
South Halsted Street, Chicago — in the heart of 

167 



168 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

a densely populated foreign tenement district 
of that great city. This institution, which has 
maintained its ground and increased the extent 
of its work in the face of a situation which has 
discouraged many other churches, not only has 
made a name for itself, but also has performed 
a unique service to its community. A pioneer 
in institutional work, it has demonstrated its 
ability to understand the needs of its constitu- 
ency and to minister in an intelligent, sympa- 
thetic, and Christlike manner to the wonder- 
fully varied population found in its immediate 
vicinity. This church is set down in a con- 
gested section of Chicago. A circle drawn with 
it as a center and with a radius of one half mile 
would comprise fifty thousand people of twenty- 
five nationalities. In the face of ignorance and 
poverty this church is moving steadily forward 
with a program of work intended to replace 
darkness with light and neglect with oppor- 
tunity. 

Just to mention the various activities which 
are carried on by the Halsted Street church 
would be to build a long list. Recently a count 
of attendance w-as made and in one normal week 
three thousand six hundred and nine people 
took part in the activities conducted within the 



A LARGE PROGRAM 169 

four walls of this institution and the number 
reached indirectly on the outside cannot be 
determined. The Sunday school alone has 
a membership of more than 1,000 and a regular 
attendance of 600. This is said to be the 
largest Sunday school in an institutional church 
in Methodism. The work for the boys and 
girls does not stop with the Sunday school, 
however. On Monday evenings pictures are 
shown and 750 children are on hand to see them. 
Bible stories, prayers, and gospel songs form a 
regular part of the program of the occasion. 
Under the supervision of a physical director, 
classes of various ages for both boys and girls 
meet at stated hours. The girls are taught to 
bake and to cook and to sew. These cooking 
clubs meet each day, the younger girls coming 
immediately after school and the older girls in 
the evening. Here relative food values are 
taught and the careful preparation of food and 
the care of dining room and kitchen are not 
only explained, but demonstrated by the girls 
themselves. 

For the boys a regular industrial school is 
conducted every Saturday forenoon at nine- 
thirty and two evenings each week following a 
devotional service of gospel songs, prayer, and 



170 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Bible stories. The school is divided into classes 
for printing, cooking, basketry, book binding, 
pyrography, brass piercing, and art crafts. 
During the summer a Daily Vacation Bible 
School is conducted for five weeks. The total 
enrollment last year was 412, with eleven 
nationalities represented as follows: Slovak, 
114; Bohemian, 94; Lithuanian, 92; German, 
29; American, 26; Polish, 20; Italian, 10; Irish, 
8; Croatians, 6; English, 4; Austrian, 1. 

Following a devotional service, which includes 
gospel songs, prayers, Bible stories, talks on 
health, habit, and other similar subjects, the 
children engage in various kinds of industry 
from hammock-making to dressmaking, knit- 
ting, and crocheting. 

The work is not altogether confined to the 
children, however, for a mothers* club meets 
every Wednesday afternoon from one to four 
o'clock. The mothers of the community are 
taught to utilize second-hand garments by 
mending or making them over, and also how 
to make garments from new material. After 
sewing for two hours each mother receives a 
fifteen-cent check which she may use in buying 
the clothing she has made or repaired. The 
work period is always followed by music, helpful 



A LARGE PROGRAM 171 

talks, and refreshments. A special playroom 
is maintained for small children with a compe- 
tent woman in charge, thus leaving the mothers 
free to sew. Many times the services of an 
interpreter are necessary in order that the 
members of the mothers' club may understand 
each other. Many of the members do not 
speak English. This club is but a stepping- 
stone to participation in other activities of the 
church, and many of the mothers, who first 
became interested through this club, are now 
regular attendants at the church and Sunday 
school services.. 

A free medical dispensary is conducted and 
is open six days each week. This is a great boon 
to the poor people of the community who need 
medical attention. When the doctors arrive 
they usually find a line of patients waiting for 
them. All hospital work is taken to the Wesley 
Memorial Hospital. Something of the size of 
the field for which this church is responsible 
may be gathered from the fact that it is not 
only set down in the" midst of a population of 
fifty thousand, but it is the only foreign- and 
English-speaking Protestant church (except 
a small Mennonite mission), and the only 
social settlement for the entire community. 



172 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Owing to the fact that the church is located in 
the midst of a foreign-speaking people it must 
often proceed along lines somewhat different 
from those mapped out in an ordinary church. 
Most of the people attending the distinctly 
religious services of the church were first inter- 
ested through some of the institutional activi- 
ties. 

In one way at least the church is ministering 
to a considerable number of individuals who 
live in other parts of the city, for it conducts at 
the noon hour a cafeteria lunch room, where 
people who work in the stores, factories, offices, 
and schoolrooms in this vicinity appreciate the 
opportunity of eating tasty well-cooked food 
in a clean, well-lighted and ventilated room. 

In spite of the fact that such a wonderful 
program of work has been carried on for so 
many years the present equipment is very old 
and altogether inadequate to the needs. Recog- 
nizing this, the Centenary is assisting in the 
building of a new plant for the carrying on of 
this very excellent work. It is to be located 
near the present institution, and it will make 
possible an even more efficient and more 
extensive work. The pastor connected with 
this church for the past five years, says that 



A LARGE PROGRAM 173 

the Sunday school can easily be increased to 
fifteen hundred when they are equipped with 
rooms and teachers to take care of the situation. 
Surely, this does not seem unreasonable when 
we remember that there are twenty thousand 
boys and girls in the community. 

In addition to the work carried on within 
the walls of the church, much relief work is 
done in the homes; coal, food, bedding, and new 
and second-hand clothing are given out when 
cases of need are discovered by visitors in the 
homes. Many pitiful cases come to the atten- 
tion of the church and the amount of supplies 
distributed reaches into the thousands of 
dollars' worth every year. Often, however, 
owing to the scarcity of funds the help given is 
inadequate to meet the needs. 

During the summer outings are arranged for 
the children and for the mothers, so that they 
can get out for a few days or a week into the 
country, where the air is pure and where rest 
amid the grass, the trees, and the flowers, 
together with an abundance of good food, does 
much to bring back the strength of those who 
have lived during the most of the year under 
conditions with which it is very difficult for the 
human body to contend. A summer camp 



174 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

located at Lake Bluff, Illinois, under the direc- 
tion of two capable workers, houses scores of 
boys and girls during the summer months for 
a period of seven days each. 



CHAPTER XX 

AN INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

MAKES A NEW TASK FOR THE 

CHURCH 

In our childhood we used to hear about 
fairies who by the waving of wands wrought 
wonderful transformations to suit their fancies, 
and our sense of wonder and admiration was 
deeply stirred. In these days, however, we 
witness greater feats than our childish imagina- 
tion could picture, and we take them as a matter 
of course, yet the achievements of fairies and 
giants were but child's play in comparison with 
the achievements of modern industry. One of 
these modern miracles has recently been worked 
in Northern Indiana. 

In the year 1906 most of what is known as the 
Calumet region of northern Indiana, which now 
has a population of a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand, was nothing but a waste of sand dunes. 
That year the first shovelful of dirt was turned 
to make way for what is now the city of Gary, 
Indiana, with a population of eighty thousand. 
The story of the remarkable growth of Gary 

175 



176 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

and the regions adjacent is of great interest, 
both from an industrial standpoint and in its 
bearing upon our task as Christians. This 
region was chosen as a center by vast industrial 
concerns because of its peculiarly fortunate 
situation. It is located upon the magnificent 
inland waterway system of the Great Lakes and 
is soon to be connected by canal with the Mis- 
sissippi River system. It is said that ninety 
per cent of the east and west railroad traffic of 
the United States passes through this region. 
A glance at the map indicating the large trunk 
lines which parallel each other here will tend to 
confirm the truth of this estimate. To the 
north and west lie great iron ore deposits, and 
to the south and east are large coal beds. 
A circle with a radius of five hundred miles is 
said to include mines producing 85 per cent of 
all the iron and coal mines in America, and 
more than half the production of the entire 
world. If this iron and coal should travel 
toward each other, their best possible meeting 
place would be the Calumet region in which 
Gary is located. Then, too, at the very door 
of this region are the greatest markets for iron 
and steel products. 

The soil here is wonderfully adapted to the 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 177 

needs of the situation. The loose sand can 
easily be disposed according to the wish of man; 
harbors can be dredged out anywhere; and 
simply by digging to moist sand the most per- 
fect possible foundation for heavy buildings is 
secured. The wet sand is so hard that pilings 
can no more be driven into it than into cement. 
It is a better foundation than rock itself be- 
cause it never cracks, never shifts, and never 
sinks. 

The captains of industries, recognizing all 
these advantages, have poured in money like 
water here. To them it has been a small 
matter to move a whole railroad system for 
many miles to get it out of the way, or to pick 
up a river and carry it over to a proper bed 
where it could better serve them, or to reverse 
the direction of a river's flow. They have 
dragged down the high places, filled up the low 
places, dredged out great harbors, and built 
mills that stand at the top of the list in the 
magnitude of their production. The giants of 
ancient days performed small tasks compared 
with these. 

Of course a great city with vast enterprises 
could not spring up without bringing in a mul- 
titude of people. And people have been coming 



178 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

to this region from the ends of the earth. 
Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, Czechoslo- 
vaks, Roumanians, Greeks, Poles, Servians, 
Croatians, and many, many others have found 
their way to Gary. The present Negro popu- 
lation of Gary is twelve thousand. Nine 
thousand of these have come since 1916. 

Practically eighty per cent of the population 
is either foreign born or of foreign parentage, and 
approximately one half of the entire population 
cannot speak or read the English language. 
Many of the groups cannot understand each 
other, so this new and wonderful city, while in 
America, can hardly be said to be of America'. 

Its people are somewhat in the position of 
those described by a certain pastor who 
remarked, "My folks do not live in America — 
America goes on over their heads." , 

Naturally in such a community religious 
problems are rather complex. The need of the 
human soul is as great in Gary as in any other 
part of the world, but the difficulties of carrying 
on a substantial ministry are numerous. Most 
of the people are working for wages, and, while 
those wages are relatively large, there is always 
the chance of losing one's job. This intensifies 
the difficulty of securing local contributions 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 179 

even from the small percentage of people who 
have thus far been reached by the church. 
There are, of course, many Catholics in the 
community, but a considerable percentage of the 
nominally Catholic population has no relation 
with any church and is open to the ministry of 
Protestant agencies. There is no accumulated 
wealth in this region. The capitalists who own 
the industries do not live here. It is difficult to 
secure either money or workers locally. The 
mass of the people represent not religious 
resources, but religious needs. 

The church has done some very good work 
in Gary. Several different denominations are 
at work in the city. But, compared to the need, 
the story of the religious work in this region is 
chiefly one of neglect by the Protestant Church. 
The men who have directed the industries of this 
region have been men of vision, and they have 
done things in a large way regardless of cost. 
But, so far, the church has lacked the resources 
which would enable it to deal in an adequate 
way with the immense conglomerate mass of 
humanity so much needing to be served. Men 
and money must be sent in from the outside 
if the church is to perform its duty in Gary and 
the region roundabout. 



180 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

The Centenary program proposes the 
strengthening of the churches already properly 
located in the region, the provision of new- 
buildings where new buildings are needed, and 
the making possible through these new build- 
ings, and through a much larger and more 
varied staff of workers, of a comprehensive 
religious program. One minister to a church 
canfiot carry on the necessary religious and 
social ministry needed among such a popula- 
tion. The Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension, as a part of its Centenary program, 
therefore, is providing additional specialized 
workers, establishing settlements, and providing 
buildings or small missions for quickly growing 
communities that would otherwise have no 
religious care. An attempt is being made, with 
the cooperation of other churches, to provide 
an efficient religious ministry for this entire 
region. Already the Board of Sunday Schools 
is assisting in an important program of week- 
day religious instruction for the boys and girls 
of Gary. 

A stream of humanity constantly passes 
through Gary — coming from the ends of the 
earth and returning again. Thus we have here 
a most unusual opportunity to reach out to the 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 181 

ends of the earth with a ministry which shall 
advance the kingdom of God throughout the 
entire world. Ours is the privilege, through 
our Centenary cooperation, to share in such a 
work. 



CHAPTER XXI 

REACHING NEW YORK'S LITTLE 
ITALY 

In the days of Jacob A. Riis and others who 
by their work and their writing helped to make 
the East Side of New York famous, the "East 
Side" suggested to the mind a congested portion 
of New York city down toward the Brooklyn 
Bridge and extending only a relatively short 
distance up the east side of the city. As New 
York has grown, this section has been extended 
steadily mile after mile until some of the most 
congested and completely foreign groups in the 
entire city are found six or seven miles north of 
the famous Mulberry Bend. The Jefferson 
Park Methodist Episcopal Church is set down 
in the midst of one of those foreign settlements 
which are so characteristic of New York. This 
church, located on East 114th Street, has in its 
neighborhood, or within twenty blocks, 100,000 
Italians. Ministering to this group there are 
two Presbyterian churches, one Episcopalian, 
one Methodist, and five Catholic. 

182 



NEW YORK'S LITTLE ITALY 183 

Jefferson Park Church faces Jefferson Park, 
which provides a little breathing space in the 
midst of much congestion. The church itself 
is a beautiful five-story brick building, new and 
modern, and it is presided over by the Rev. A. 
M. D. Riggio. Mr. Riggio was born in Italy 
and, curiously enough, is a product of foreign 
missions, for he was converted in the Methodist 
church at Palermo, Sicily. Mr. Riggio thinks 
of himself as a teacher. He realizes something 
of the difficulty that individuals raised in a 
Catholic environment have of understanding 
our Protestant ways of thinking. The mere 
fact that a child is born in America and attends 
public school here does not mean that he under- 
stands Protestant America, particularly if he 
grows up in a home where the members of the 
family have had only the Catholic training 
which they received in Italy to guide them. 

In spite of the fact that a very large propor- 
tion of all the Italians who come to this country 
are Catholic by name, Mr. Riggio estimates 
that not more than ten thousand of the one 
hundred thousand Italians living in his neigh- 
borhood attend any church. The other ninety 
thousand constitute a real field for Protestant 
evangelism. These people have withdrawn 



184 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

their allegiance from the Catholic Church, and 
they are suspicious many times of the Protestant 
church. They have been fooled with churches, 
so that they are cautious in their allegiances. 
It takes time and patience to interpret Chris- 
tianity to such as these, but that is exactly what 
is being accomplished at Jefferson Park. 

One striking feature of the work here is the 
fact that there is not a single charity case on 
the books of the church. The pastor is con- 
vinced that to make the church in that neigh- 
borhood a headquarters for relief would be a 
tremendous mistake. Instead, he is building 
up a self-respecting and ultimately self-sup- 
porting church out of the people who come 
because they are vitally interested in the ideals 
held up and in the message proclaimed. Possi- 
ble charity cases are referred to regular charity 
organizations, or temporary relief is provided 
in such a way that those who receive it do not 
recognize it as coming from the Jefferson Park 
Church. The fine constituency of the church 
is therefore not attracted by the "loaves and 
the fishes." 

It is an inspiring sight to go into the Sunday 
school here and see the rooms filled with neatly 
clothed, bright-eyed boys and girls. They love 



NEW YORK'S LITTLE ITALY 185 

to sing for visitors, and they know how to put 
their best efforts into their singing. It is most 
impressive to listen to a crowd of these real 
Americans singing "America," or "The Star- 
Spangled Banner/' or some gospel hymns. 
Born in Italian homes, they are true Americans, 
and while they have some difficulties w T hich 
those born in Protestant homes do not have, 
they will go out to fill important places in our 
civic and national life. 

The present need of the Italian work here is 
more and better-trained assistants. The Cen- 
tenary will make possible the meeting of this 
need by increasing the budget for this highly 
important work. Just a few blocks from 
Jefferson Park Church stands the old Trinity 
Methodist Episcopal Church. This has for 
years housed an English-speaking congregation, 
but as the Italian population increased it became 
impossible to keep the English-speaking group 
together. The church has for some time been 
closed. It has now been taken over, remodeled 
and put into shape for use in connection with 
the Jefferson Park Church. Here, motion 
pictures will be shown and various types of 
social activities undertaken. This gives the 
Jefferson Park Church a chance to broaden its 



186 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

work and to reach by a more varied appeal more 
of the people in its neighborhood. 

Special effort has been made to help the boys 
and girls of the Jefferson Park Church to feel 
that the church is really their own. When it 
was built each child was given an opportunity 
to paint, under the direction of a skilled deco- 
rator, one part of the decorations over the 
pulpit. The artistic result is most satisfactory, 
but the larger result is found in the feeling of 
possession which the young people have for 
their church. In order that the people of this 
neighborhood who have been accustomed to 
beautiful Catholic churches might not be 
disappointed in their Protestant church and 
might feel that it was really a church, the 
chapel has been made a thing of beauty. This 
is in contrast to the chapels of some churches 
and missions, where the ministry is felt to be 
adequate, even though the rooms are crude 
and barnlike. 

This church has a summer home over at Long 
Branch, New Jersey, and there many of the 
boys and girls are taken for their summer 
outing. During the active part of the year the 
Sunday school is large, the Epworth League 
flourishing, and the grip upon the young people 



NEW YORK'S LITTLE ITALY 187 

and children is strong. Then, there are Boy 
Scouts, Girl Scouts, a glee club, a school of 
music, an orchestra, a cooking class, a night 
school for English-Italian and Italian-English, 
mothers 5 meetings, a choral class, a bugle and 
drum corps, a type-setting and printing class, 
and an athletic club. 

The value of this varied work is recognized 
by the local captain of police, who says of it, 
"I heartily commend the strong effort you are 
making and hope that other churches will take 
up the good work started by you in bringing 
the youngsters under such wholesome influences, 
thereby fitting them to grow up and become 
good American citizens." 



CHAPTER XXII 
A CHURCH IN A GRAVEYARD 

The Bowery region of New York city, which 
has long been known as the home and hangout 
of criminals, bums, drunkards, and other weak 
and more or less undesirable members of society, 
was once the home of New York's aristocracy. 
To-day some of those who know this region 
best refer to it as a "burying ground" or "grave- 
yard" because so many individuals have found 
it convenient to break all connections with the 
past and lose themselves and their identity by 
dropping into its complex social maelstrom. 

There is another good reason too why this 
general region of New York can properly be 
termed a "graveyard." It has for years been 
a graveyard for churches. Generation after 
generation, the character of this place has been 
changing and churches have found it more 
difficult to exist here than almost anywhere else 
in the country. This has not been due to a lack 
of people, for the population has been steadily 
increasing. Rather it has been due to the sort 
of people who have come, the sort of people who 

188 



A CHURCH IN A GRAVEYARD 189 

have moved out, and the limited program of 
work which small resources have made possible. 
One after another churches have closed their 
doors and been converted into warehouses, 
stores, motion picture halls, or have been used 
for other purposes. Churches of all denomina- 
tions, including the Methodist Episcopal, have 
retreated before the ever-increasing throng of 
European immigrants who have come in to 
drive out older settlers. Most of these new 
arrivals cannot speak English when they come 
to this country. They do not understand 
American institutions or American church 
programs. For the most part they are not 
familiar with Protestant ways of thinking and 
acting. Millions of them are nominally Catho- 
lic, but a large percentage of them have, as a 
matter of fact, severed all vital relationship 
with any church at all. Jews too have been 
coming in great numbers and they have for the 
most part gotten as far away from the influence 
of the synagogue as have the Catholics from 
the influence of their own churches. The 
fathers usually learn to speak a more-or-less 
imperfect English, but often the mothers never 
learn to understand or to speak the English 
language. The boys and girls must, of neces- 



190 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

sity, speak their mother's language in the home, 
but on the street and in the public school they 
quickly master a certain sort of English. 

Crowded together in dirty and unsanitary 
tenements, many times sleeping in dark rooms 
which have no direct outside ventilation or light 
and living under conditions which are a con- 
tinual menace to health and morals, the wonder 
is not that so many have un-American ideas and 
standards, but, rather, that so many turn out 
to be fine, useful citizens. The public school 
and the life on the streets are perhaps the two 
most important factors in the experience of 
many of these boys and girls who grow up in 
the homes of our newcomers. The public 
school can do much, and has done much in the 
past, but it cannot begin to minister to all of 
the manysided needs of its pupils. 

In the face of a retreat which has been so 
general as to be little short of a disgrace to the 
Christian Church, it is encouraging to discover 
some institutions which have stayed in the place 
of need and which have, in spite of difficulties 
and discouragement, ministered persistently to 
this steadily growing and tremendously needy 
population. 

Just off from the Bowery, away down at the 



A CHURCH IN A GRAVEYARD 191 

very beginning of Second Avenue, is the Church 
of All Nations, together with the Neighborhood 
House and the equipment and activities which 
have centered around them, and which, during 
the years have meant so much to the people in 
its vicinity. Under the leadership of Dr. John 
R. Henry this institution has been steadily 
serving through the years, and now the Cen- 
tenary is bringing it out into a brighter and 
more promising future. 

Physically, the present plant, which includes 
offices, a gymnasium, an entertainment hall, 
church auditorium, and various other rooms and 
halls for club work and other kinds of social 
work, is connected directly with the Hadley 
Rescue Hall, which opens out upon the Bowery, 
and the doors between these two apparently 
unrelated institutions are rarely closed. The 
unfortunate men on the Bowery who wander 
into the Hadley Rescue Hall and there find a 
better and more promising way of life, are, when 
they have become thoroughly established in the 
new way, turned over to the Church of All 
Nations, where they are not only given careful 
pastoral attention, but where they are also 
given a chance to serve in connection with the 
work which is carried on by the church. 



192 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

If you were to attend the services which 
center around the Church of All Nations on a 
typical Sunday, you would have to begin at 
9 :30 in the morning, when a meeting is held in 
the Hadley Rescue Hall. At 11 o'clock an 
English preaching service is held in the Church 
of All Nations; at 2 o'clock the Junior Chinese 
School in Doyers Street; at 2:30 o'clock the 
English Sunday school meets and at 3 the adult 
Chinese Sunday school. At 4 o'clock there is a 
Russian preaching service; at 5 o'clock the 
Chinese Y. M. C. A., at 8 o'clock an Italian 
preaching service and at the same hour a 
Russian lecture. Of course, there is a 3 o'clock 
meeting in the Hadley Rescue Hall and another 
meeting there at 8 o'clock; but one person 
cannot attend everything. 

On a Saturday night you might, if you are 
lucky, get in to see the motion pictures which 
are put on for the benefit of the boys and girls 
from the streets. I say if you are lucky, for 
often the room, which accommodates a thousand, 
is crowded to overflowing and those who cannot 
get seats stand in the hallway outside, or turn 
away in disappointment. This gathering, how- 
ever, is more than an ordinary motion picture 
show, for there is often a brief talk to the boys 



A CHURCH IN A GRAVEYARD 193 

and girls by some member of the staff, or by 
some visitor brought in for the occasion. Then, 
too, there is some very cheerful singing of reli- 
gious songs, and the boys and girls join in 
these with a volume almost enough to raise the 
roof. One of their favorite songs is, "Brighten 
the Corner Where You are," and while it has 
a rather peculiar significance in the environ- 
ment in which these boys and girls are forced to 
live, you can hear them singing it in their 
homes or as they play on the streets. 

Nearly every race and nationality of the 
world is represented in the population of this 
neighborhood. Perhaps the dominating groups 
in the immediate vicinity of the Church of All 
Nations are Italians and Jews. 

Just to enumerate the various types of min- 
istry carried on by the Church of All Nations 
would be to build a long list. It would include 
basket-ball, tennis, indoor baseball, bowling, 
and other games for the boys and girls, as well as 
gymnasium classes, Chinese Boy Scouts, Italian 
Boy Scouts, the Win-One Club for Girls, a fine 
Vacation Home at Long Branch; night schools 
for Italians and Russians, and many other 
similar activities. You would discover, if you 
watched carefully enough, that many of the 



194 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

most enthusiastic workers here have themselves 
been saved from evil in the Church of All 
Nations, or in the Hadley Rescue Hall, and 
that they are now trying to give back in kind 
something of what they have received. You 
might discover that the assistant superinten- 
dent of the Rescue Hall was a man who himself 
had come up "from the ranks," as the expression 
is there. An assistant in the Sunday school was, 
no later than 1917, a bartender on the Bowery. 
One night he wandered into the Hadley Rescue 
Hall, and from that moment his transformation 
has been continuous. Instead of tending bar 
he is now superintendent in an important 
manufacturing concern. He was one of those 
unfortunate individuals who, in spite of religious 
training in youth found the way of drink so easy 
that his future was apparently ruined until the 
mission reached out its helping hand to him. 

At the time of the Centenary Celebration in 
Columbus the Pennsylvania Railroad set aside 
a special car so that Dr. Henry, the pastor of the 
Church of All Nations, could take with him to 
Columbus some twenty Chinese children who 
took part in the exercises in the China building 
throughout the Celebration. Dr. Henry, in 
telling of the experience, said that he had 



A CHURCH IN A GRAVEYARD 195 

rarely put in such a night in all h s life as the one 
spent on the train. A night on the train was 
the most unusual and delightful experience 
which these boys and girls had ever passed 
through, and they seemed resolved to make the 
most of it. At the Celebration these children 
attracted general attention and their dignified 
bearing, gentle manners, and attractiveness 
were a revelation to many who had not before 
been in first-hand contact with Chinese children. 
Dr. Gowdy, who had charge of the China 
building in Columbus, said that, everything 
considered, these twenty children provided 
the most satisfactory part of the entire China 
exhibit. 

But the best part of this story remains to be 
told. The Centenary is going to make possible 
a permanent home for this fine work, a place 
from which the Methodist Episcopal Church 
need not retreat, and of which it need not be 
ashamed; a place where a broad ministry can be 
carried on among these multitudes who have 
such varied needs. The plans are already 
drawn, and in due time, as the Centenary money 
is paid in, a new structure, reaching through 
from the Bowery to Second Avenue and having 
entrances on both of these streets, will be 



196 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

erected. Dingy rooms with plaster tumbling 
from the walls will give place to well lighted, 
well-planned, attractive rooms. The present 
small and inadequate staff will be increased by 
the addition of individuals who are specialists in 
their own lines, people who can call in the homes 
and minister to needs there; district nurses, 
physical instructors, educational leaders, Sun- 
day-school workers and others will be added, 
so that something approaching an adequate 
program of work can be effectively carried out. 
A staff of workers of this sort might seem large 
in another church, but we must remember that 
this institution is set down in the midst of one 
of the most densely populated regions in all 
the world, a place where in a single block more 
people reside than in entire groups of towns in 
our rural regions. The opportunity for effective 
ministry here is limited only by the number of 
workers, the equipment, and the spirit of conse- 
cration which is put into the work. And this 
is the sort of enterprise which the money given 
for the Centenary by the boys and girls in our 
Sunday schools is helping to make possible. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS 

One day when John was apparently some- 
what in doubt as to the authority of Jesus, he 
sent his disciples to ask, "Art thou he that 
cometh, or do we look for another?" 

The story goes on to relate that Jesus replied, 
"Go and show John again those things which 
ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, 
and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and 
the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and 
the poor have the gospel preached to them." 
Jesus's work was its own sufficient justification. 

It is some such feeling as this which comes to 
one as he gets to know the Ep worth Institutional 
Church, located at Lawrence and 31st Streets, 
Denver, Colorado, of which the Rev. Ezra M. 
Cox is pastor and superintendent. The large 
and varied ministry rendered here in the heart 
of one of the poorest sections of Denver does 
indeed speak for itself. 

An interesting time to visit the church is at 
the noon hour of a school day, when some 
eighty-five children from four public schools 

197 



198 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

and one parochial school appear for luncheon. 
For two cents each child receives all he desires 
to eat of a wholesome, nourishing soup, crackers, 
bread, and a cookie. The group that assembles 
is not a miscellaneous one of which the Ep worth 
workers know nothing. On the contrary, the 
home of each child has been visited and the 
living conditions investigated. For the most 
part these children come from homes where the 
mother is a widow, or where there is sickness or 
other disability on the part of the bread-winner. 
Practically all of these children would be under- 
nourished were it not for the lunches provided 
at Epworth. Sometimes the bowls come back 
for five or six helpings, but no child is allowed 
to go away hungry. In a few days the improve- 
ment in the physical condition of the pupil can 
often be noted. 

The fine Epworth gymnasium, known as the 
Julius Titsworth Memorial, is also a strong 
attraction for the young people. Here physical 
culture, drills, and games are the order of the 
day, and the young people of the vicinity thus 
have an opportunity to employ their otherwise 
unoccupied hours in building up strong bodies 
in a genuinely Christian environment. In 
addition to the regular classes there are several 



KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS 199 

organized clubs for young men and boys and for 
young women and girls. A recent count 
revealed fourteen such clubs, besides a Mothers' 
Club. 

The public library has also recognized Ep- 
worth by establishing here a branch, from which 
at certain hours the young people of the com- 
munity may secure good books. 

Surely, Epworth is a real community center 
from which in a very large measure the helpful 
and uplifting influences of the community 
radiate. The children and young people are 
gathered from the streets into a splendid build- 
ing where they are provided with the oppor- 
tunity for physical and moral development, as 
well as for social enjoyment. Cooking and 
housekeeping classes, sewing classes, elocution 
and music classes, and others, all make their 
contribution to the life of the young people. 
Of course, medica 1 and surgical aid forms a 
regular part of the service rendered, and the 
Epworth Friendly Visitor goes continually 
through the neighborhood scattering sunshine 
and good cheer and bringing the Institution into 
sympathetic touch with the home and its needs. 

Judge Ben Lindsey speaks of Epworth 
Church in no uncertain terms. In his office 



200 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

he has a map on which he records by a series 
of pins the juvenile delinquents of the city of 
Denver, A few years ago the section in which 
Epworth Church is located was among the 
worst in the entire city from the standpoint of 
juvenile delinquency. Gradually, as the work 
of Epworth has been extended, he has seen the 
map change for the better. During the last 
five years he says child crime has fallen off 
seventy-five per cent in the neighborhood. 
Surely, this is a record of which to be proud. 

The formal church activities are not neglected 
here. There is a well-conducted Sunday school 
of several hundred members and a substantial 
congregation with a genuine church life and a 
remarkable devotion on the part of the mem- 
bers to the church, for most of them have had a 
very definite opportunity to see the sincerity of 
its teachings demonstrated by its unselfish 
service in their own homes. Many of the 
people of Epworth have first been drawn to 
Denver to secure better health conditions for 
some member of the family, and Epworth has 
helped by its ministry some two hundred 
worthy families out of poorer conditions into 
better surroundings. 

Perhaps this will be understood better when 



KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS 201 

we tell more of the story, for there is more to tell. 
Some distance away from the church itself 
Ep worth conducts a regular "Goodwill Indus- 
tries/' where cast off articles, given through 
"opportunity bags" are assembled, cleaned, 
repaired, and then sold to the poor at a nominal 
price. In this way many needy ones are 
provided with work and many others are given 
the opportunity to secure clothing, furniture, 
and other articles, at a price which they can 
afford. Thus the ministry is a double one. 

It would require a volume to complete the 
story of Epworth, but this suggestion of the 
nature and variety of its work will give us some 
idea of what might be accomplished if institu- 
tions like Epworth might be multiplied through- 
out the country. The Centenary plans provide 
definitely for just this sort of thing in many 
needy city centers, and it is for this service that 
a substantial proport on of our home mission 
Centenary offerings is being used. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE 

Those who were present at the Centenary 
Celebration at Columbus on the day of the 
great "Victory Processional," when thousands 
of missionaries and volunteer workers in cos- 
tume rode or marched past the reviewing stand 
and finally gathered in a great body in front of 
the assembled multitude, witnessed a sight 
which they will not soon forget. At the head 
of the procession rode two men on horses. One 
of them was from the Church South, the other 
from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
individual representing the latter branch of the 
church was familiar to many in the crowd as 
"Brother Van," the name by which Dr. William 
Wesley Van Orsdel, of Montana, was for so 
many years known — not only in his own State 
but also in many circles throughout the entire 
United States. Since the celebration Brother 
Van has died, and the circles in which he so long 
moved will know him no more. His death on 
December 19, 1919, removed a man who for 
forty-seven years had giv^n the best that he 
had to the service of his Master in Montana. 

202 



A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE 203 

He loved and believed in Montana and Montana 
loved and believed in him. To a very remark- 
able degree Brother Van had the confidence, 
not only of the best people of Montana, but 
also of many who were far from saints; they 
believed in his integrity; they trusted his 
motives, and they were proud to count them- 
selves his friends. 

In his own way Brother Van was a real 
genius. In many respects his ministry was 
unique. It was perhaps well summed up in 
advance by himself, when as a young man, in 
1872, he replied to a boat captain who wanted 
to know why he wanted to* go to Montana, 
"Oh, to sing and pray, and to encourage people 
to be good." For nearly fifty years he fol- 
lowed out this program of ministry; he sang in 
his own peculiar fashion; he prayed as his 
heart dictated, and he preached to the people 
the simple gospel which he had known as a boy, 
and incidentally, it endeared him to the hearts 
of the people from the lowest to the highest. 
He was at home in the humblest homesteader's 
shack, or rancher's cabin, and he was equally 
at ease when he visited the governor of the 
State, either to make an informal personal call, 
or to secure some desired permission. 



204 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

When he preached, saloon keepers closed their 
places of business that "the boys" might attend 
the service. They loaned him lamps, or pro- 
vided candles, that the place of meeting might 
be lighted, and they listened with equal atten- 
tion to the stories of the early days in Montana 
and to the story of the Babe of Bethlehem born 
so many years ago. Thus smiling, singing, 
preaching, building churches, planning schools, 
constructing hospitals, and ministering in count- 
less other ways, William Wesley Van Orsdel 
built for himself a monument in the hearts of 
the people with whom he lived and among 
whom he labored. 

William Van Orsdel 1 was born March 20, 1848, 
in the good old eastern State of Pennsylvania. 
As a boy he roamed and played over the hills 
of Gettysburg, and when the famous battle 
was fought he was there carrying water to the 
wounded of both the Northern and Southern 
armies. Although his sympathies were with 
the North, the color of the uniform made little 
difference to him as he went about relieving 
the distress of the stricken soldiers. The shell 
fire was heavy and once a cannon ball fell near 

1 Many of the following facts are taken from Brother Van, 
by Stella W. Brummitt. 



A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE 205 

him. The fact that it failed to explode was all 
that saved this young life for Montana. A 
girl friend of his was killed by a stray shot, but 
except for a few powder marks on the face 
William came through those difficult days 
unharmed. 

William's father died when he was fourteen 
years of age and he was left to care for his 
mother, two sisters, and the farm. Then his 
mother died, the home was broken up, and he 
went to live with an aunt. He attended 
Hunterstown Academy, and it was here that 
his imagination was stimulated as he read of 
the "Northwest," the "Great American Desert," 
and the Indian life of that vast new country. 
To William, however, it was more than a 
place for adventure, it was a field of service. 
Raised in a Christian home, his zeal for Chris- 
tian service came natural to him, and as a boy he 
had found time to minister to the needy, and 
to tell the gospel story to his friends and neigh- 
bors, so that he was already known as the "boy 
evangelist." 

At seventeen, with an exhorter's license in his 
pocket, but with very little money for his 
journey he started for the great Northwest. 
Working by the day, preaching, organizing 



206 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

Sunday schools, and holding special revival 
services, he literally worked his way slowly 
westward. Many opportunities were offered 
him, but his mind was ever on his goal, which 
was Montana. He reached Sioux City, Iowa, 
in 1872, and finally persuaded a Missouri 
River boat captain to take him the one thousand 
miles to Fort Benton. As the boat proceeded 
up the river hostile Indians could be seen 
fighting on the shore. The crew was in constant 
fear of landing lest an attack might be made 
upon them. At one point a tall white man, with 
long black hair and a wide-brimmed hat, boarded 
the boat. It was none other than William F. 
Cody, later to become famous as "Buffalo 
Bill." Thus, after many varied adventures, 
Brother Van reached Fort Benton on the first 
day of July, 1872. His ready smile, keen wit, 
and his spirit and practice of helpfulness had 
already won him the friendship of all on board 
the boat. He had now reached the land of his 
dreams and he was ready to begin his real work. 
He wasted no time, for he landed Sunday morn- 
ing and twice that day he preached in a saloon 
to a crowd of Indians, settlers, cowboys, freight- 
ers, and others. 

To recount the many experiences which 



A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE 207 

Brother Van passed through in Montana would 
be to tell a story forty-seven years long, for he 
was ever on the move. There were dangers, 
deprivations, and difficulties of many sorts, 
but for him they were but the spice of life — 
the elements which made life continually inter- 
esting and alluring. To say that he built one 
hundred churches, fifty parsonages, six 
hospitals, and two large institutions of learning, 
is but to mention some of the external evidences 
of a ministry which was, after all, primarily 
spiritual. Brother Van is now gone, but his 
life and spirit still live and will continue to live 
in Montana. 

The fulfillment of the program for which 
Brother Van and his associates labored so 
unceasingly still lies in the future, and the 
Centenary is to have a large part in it. Heroic 
souls have laid the foundations and we are to 
share in the completion of the structure. No 
sooner had the Centenary funds begun to come 
in than a cry of desperate need came from 
Montana. The failure of the crops in certain 
sections had left the churches without adequate 
support and the residents in different communi- 
ties were in actual distress. Recognizing the 
need, and for once having the funds at hand, 



208 HOME MISSION TRAILS 

money was sent that churches might not be 
closed and that homes might not be abandoned 
by those who had not the resources to buy 
the necessaries of life for their families. Was 
it not fortunate that the church was prepared to 
minister in such a time of need? 

Recently there has been held in Montana an 
interdenominational conference to work out a 
religious program for the State, with a view to 
providing for unchurched communities and 
avoiding of overlapping. Definite responsi- 
bilities were assigned to different denominations 
so that each knows what its particular task is. 
The Centenary is to make possible a very 
definite advance here. Better buildings, better- 
paid pastors, and new enterprises involving a 
broader ministry in many ways are the order 
of the day, and this is no small contribution to 
an immense State still in the frontier stage of 
development, but with large prospects for the 
future. 

Brother Van gladly gave nearly half a cen- 
tury of his life to Montana in the days when 
such giving involved genuine sacrifice. May 
we not count it a privilege to have, under more 
favorable conditions, even a small part in the 
work which he has so well begun? 



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